


In the Company of Wolves

by ancient_moonshine



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Lovers, If you've ever read any MoonshineTM fic you know the drill, Kidnapping, Lima Syndrome, Mild Gore, Nightmares, PTSD, Possessiveness, Protectiveness, Red Riding Hood Elements, Road Trip from Hell, Seducing the Kidnapper, Sort Of, Stockholm Syndrome, The Grand Feanorian Tradition of Kidnapping with Accidental Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:34:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21793828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancient_moonshine/pseuds/ancient_moonshine
Summary: When Dior is taken from the woods on the way to his grandmother's, he refuses to let himself be devoured. Meanwhile Celegorm is on a hunt, and doesn't expect to be the one trapped.
Relationships: Celegorm | Turcafinwë/Dior Eluchíl
Comments: 121
Kudos: 144





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Taga_Bakod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taga_Bakod/gifts).



> Fic is complete and will be posted within the month, as edits go. Thank you, and please comment. :D

Dior is taken on his way to Doriath. 

It had been early autumn, and he had only a few guards for company. Mother and Father were supposed to go with him, but had been delayed by some matters that needed to be settled in Tol Galen, so Dior had insisted on heading to Menegroth first. Grandmother was expecting them, after all, and from Ossiriand to Doriath would only take a few weeks of travel along a road Dior had taken all sixteen years of his life. There was also the thrill of traveling alone for the first time - or as close to alone as Dior could get accompanied by guards who’ve known him from the cradle. No matter how Dior sighed, Mother had insisted.

“For your safety.” She said firmly. Dior did not miss the worry clouding her lined face when they said their farewells by Tol Galen’s wharf, but he’s too excited to think much of it. He waves at his parents cheerfully one last time from atop the barge taking him to the mainland, and Father puts his arm around Mother’s shoulder as he and his guards cross the channel where their horses were waiting, the forest swallowing them up.

The leaves are just beginning to turn. They catch on the veiled hat Dior wears to keep his too-pale skin from burning even in the autumn sunlight, the sheer fabric the color of blood. His favourite guard – Nimloth, an elf-woman with a sly smile who enjoyed making Dior blush - starts to sing. Dior joins in, his high tenor mingling with her rough, sweet voice. Another guard – Eiliant, in elf-years the closest in age to Dior – strums a lute, while Ubru – the eldest, rumoured to have been born on the shores of Cuivienen, though good luck getting a straight answer out of him -beats a small hand drum. They race each other when the paths are clear, pick their way carefully among shallow streams and stones, tell each other stories around a campfire and talk and laugh.

It’s a familiar road, a safe road, until it isn’t. They’re nearing the borders of Melian’s Vale when an arrow buries itself in Eiliant’s back. 

Dior stares at him blankly, stupidly for a long moment, red spreading around where the arrowhead was lodged, Eiliant’s mouth a wide “O” of surprise, and then he’d dropped to the forest floor and then the forest was swarming. In the confusion, Dior had just barely managed to grab his sword, Father’s training taking over as he prevents an orc from taking his head off with an axe. The horrible clang of metal on metal sets Dior’s teeth jarring. The orc takes another swing at him, and as Dior spots an opening he gracelessly slides his sword between its ribs. Thick black blood sprays from its mouth, spattering Dior’s robes.

“Dior! This way!” Nimloth grabs him before he can so much as hear the orc’s dying breath, ensuring his nerveless fingers are still grasping his sword. There are more orcs than elves lying on the ground but in the shadows of the trees Dior spots several other hulking figures making their way to their already decimated party, Ubru rallying the surviving guards while Nimloth has to keep Dior from joining them, firmly grasping his arm and half-dragging him down a half-hidden path.

“I need to _help-“_ Nimloth’s grip tightens on his arm.

“They’re after you.” Nimloth says in a low undertone. “You won’t be helping if you run straight into their arms. Dior, please _stay put._ Now is not the time for heroics.” And it’s the first time Dior’s seen her like this, stern and deadly serious, warning him to remain as silent as possible as they picked their way through the dark. Dior’s ears burn with the sound of metal, his friends’ screams. He stays put.

“We need to get to Doriath.” Nimloth says, her face pale but set as she carefully leads Dior forwards, his hand in hers, his sword heavy in the other. Only bright blue specks of the sky ahead can be seen above, the tree canopy so thick the sunlight can barely penetrate it. “Tol Galen is too far behind. This path is far less safe but it’s hidden. Hopefully we won’t be followed. We’ll be safe once we’re past Melian’s Girdle.” They never reach it.

Dior isn’t sure what happens next. Only that he feels a sharp bite of what he thought was an insect stinging on his throat. And then the already-dark woods start fading around him. He can hear Nimloth shouting, hear more metal screaming and all Dior wants for it is to _stop._ For him to be back home, safe and sound, with Father and Mother. To be in Menegroth where Grandmother can hold him and say it had all been a nightmare. And so it does.

\---- 

He wakes to find himself being carried, slung over the shoulder of someone too tall and too broad to be Nimloth. His head aches, his throat is parched. His wrists, to his dawning horror, are bound. When he starts to struggle, he feels something sharp prick his skin again, feels the darkness take him once more.

After that is a muddled mess of sensation, Dior swimming in and out of consciousness. Sometimes there’s sunlight, mostly there’s the dark. At one point Dior sensed the forest had narrowed down to a dark cavern, but his eyes closed before he could take the view in and be certain. Another time, he hears the rush of a river but when he tries to move, his limbs don’t obey him. He opens his eyes a crack, and sees the dark figure, ahead of him once again.

“W-who.” He begins to whisper. The person carrying him – his captor – is wearing a hooded cloak, and it’s impossible to see if the figure even has a face. The dark figure ignores him, and Dior nods off. But later on when he wakes – his limbs so sore they’re screaming, he finds he’s no longer being carried. He’s on the rough stone floor of what seems to be a cave, his hands and ankles still bound. He’s thirsty and his stomach feels so empty he feels hunger like a burning coal. But there’s a fire, and Dior is warmer than he’s been in an age. He forces himself to keep his eyes open, though the act makes him woozy.

“Don’t try to sit up too quickly. All the blood will rush down and you’ll faint.” The stranger’s Sindar is harshly-accented. Dior freezes when he hears the voice, sees the shadow falling over him. Deep and rough, almost a growl. It’s an effort to turn his gaze towards up to where the speaker is watching him with unveiled amusement.

A tall elf with dirty silver hair, tangled all the way down his back, his dark clothes worn by hard living. His lips stretched into a satisfied grin showing too-sharp teeth, and Dior gets the uncanny sense that if he peeled back the elf’s weather-beaten skin, he would find a wolf smiling back at him.

In the dim light Dior can’t make out the insignia on his faded red doublet, but when his vision focuses, all the blood freezes in his veins.

Everyone knew what the eight-pointed star meant. Which family it belonged to. Dior had listened to Mother describe it enough times, in her stories.

Dior opens his mouth, licks his lips with a swollen, cracked tongue. Tries to speak. Celegorm – Dior knows the name, knows the elf who owns it, even though he’s never met him except as a villain in a song – holds a cup of water to his lips. Dior hesitates, then drinks. His captor waits until he finishes it before speaking.

“I am Lord Celegorm Fëanorion, though I believe you already know that.” His captor says. “Your family, as you well know, took something that belongs to mine by rights. If you ever expect to see your parents again – and if you should wish them to ever see you outside of the Halls of Awaiting, you had better do as I say.”

\--

He tries to escape thrice.

The first time, Celegorm had gone out for some reason or another and Dior hadn’t wasted another moment. He manages to croak a song that has his bonds falling off just like his mother taught him, stumbling out of Celegorm’s cave on numb feet and somehow his body managed to obey him, to stay upright. But before he can even try to run, he feels strong arms wrap around his waist and mouth. They’re like bands of iron, no matter how he struggles or tries to shout. Celegorm drags him back, hits a point at the back of his neck that makes him go limp. When he regains consciousness, he’s back in the cave and his hands and ankles have been tied together, his mouth gagged.

He fares no better the second time. He manages to saw off the ropes with a sharp piece of rock against the cave wall, but Celegorm catches him before he can take off the gag, ties him up again as he tries to thrash with the little strength he had left. _Like a piece of poultry for the kitchens_ , Dior thinks, struggling, glaring at Celegorm while the older elf smiles at him with his teeth bared. _Wolflike._ Exactly the way Mother had described him. The star on his breast gleams dully, rusted red covering the silver and gold embroidery.

The third time, he manages to saw the ropes off again when he’s alone, stumbling into the woods and grabbing at a stick to defend himself with. Celegorm is waiting for him, manages to knock the stick out of his weakened grip. When he tries to make a grab for Celegorm’s sword, Celegorm twists his wrist so hard that he’s left limp and gasping on his knees, then drags him back into the cave while he struggles.

“If you keep trying to escape, I’ll really have no reason to start feeding you.” Celegorm says drily. “And don’t underestimate me - I’ve had plenty of experience starving men into submission.” He’s turning an animal on a spit – a rabbit, which he’d skinned and gutted in front of Dior before he’d tossed him back into the cave. The smell of blood and the sight of gore, Celegorm’s red, red hands making his stomach churn but he’d refused to show fear. Now the cloying smell of burning meat and dripping fat is making Dior’s empty stomach churn even as his mouth is too dry to salivate. He thrashes feebly against his bonds.

His stomach rumbles. Celegorm gives him a considering glance. He’d removed the gag when he came in. Out of boredom, Dior guesses. He’s counted roughly three sunsets that they’ve been here.

“Have your parents so spoiled you that you don’t understand hardship? We went longer without food during the flight from Valinor. My cousins starved while crossing the Grinding Ice, but they survived.” Dior glares at him. Whatever ferocity he can muster up is spoiled by the effect of his belly growling again. Celegorm snorts.

“Your father’s blood is what’s weakening you, I expect. Well, I gave your mother a choice, she insisted on fouling her lineage with the blood of Men.” Dior stares at him.

“My mother,” he says, the words falling out of his cracked and bleeding mouth. “Would probably have been more willing to marry an orc than _you._ ” Celegorm laughs. It’s harsh, more like the bark of a dog than anything else.

“Doubtless she would have. And if she’d fallen in love with an orc, Thingol might have just spitted him outright instead of sending him on a roundabout quest to meet his doom at the hands of Morgoth, thus causing the deaths of everyone your parents succeeded in dragging into the mess. Including themselves.” He turns the meat on its spit. “A pity my cousin Finrod had to get involved, but that’s what he got for falling in love with an entire lineage of mayflies.” Anger blazes in Dior, white-hot. He never thought he could hate anyone this much.

“ _Your_ father dragged his whole people in a stupid war over his stupid silmarils, and then abandoned them on the Grinding Ice.” Dior croaks out his retort. “I think I know who’s the _worst_ king.” Celegorm walks over to him, then hits him hard enough across the face to send him sprawling on the floor.

He lies on his side where he’d fallen, winded, his face throbbing. Celegorm sighs, pushes him onto his back with his booted foot, sinks to one knee in front of him so he’s forced to look him in the face. Mingled anger and amusement twisting his features.

“Let’s play a game.” Celegorm says. “Rest assured, we’re not going to remain here forever. – If you can stop trying to escape – and maybe do me the favour of holding your tongue - I’ll feed you every day.” Dior peers at him through the tangle of his hair. In the firelight, he looks like a fell spirit, his features flickering and changing shape. Or that might just be the hunger talking.

“If not, then you starve, and we’ll both have a harder time dealing with each other in the long run.” If Dior’s mouth hadn’t been so dry, he would have spit at him.

“If Grandmother doesn’t find you first and let Mother skin you alive.” Dior snarls. Celegorm just smiles at him, full of teeth.

“Perhaps. But it doesn’t really speak well for your Grandmother’s supposed powers of foresight that she hasn’t seem to have found you yet.” Celegorm gets up dusting his knee before heading to the fire and the meat he has roasting there. Dior turns away when he resumes eating.

 _They’ll find me,_ he thinks to himself, huddling against the wall, his bound hands and feet aching, ignoring the sound of Celegorm feasting. _They’ll find me, and they’ll take me home._


	2. Chapter 2

They don’t find him.

Celegorm makes good on his threat. Dior is left bound on the cave floor, without food or water, his face aching from where Celegorm had hit him. The hours slip by, second after miserable second. Dior counts one sunrise, then another. Waiting for his family, stirring whenever he hears hoofbeats, sagging back when he sees it’s just his captor, back again. Drifting in and out of miserable memory to miserable present.

When he closes his eyes, he sees arrows. Eiliant, dying in front of him. Ubru staggering up and just barely blocking the blow of an orc’s mace. Nimloth’s pale face. How difficult it had been to shove a blade into a living chest, and Dior wonders where his sword is. If Aranruth would be as heavy to wield.

Celegorm comes and goes. Dior doesn’t bother speaking to him, - too weak to do so, if he were honest with himself -and neither does he, though Dior can feel his attention on him – rather like a wolf biding its time for its prey to sneak out the undergrowth. Dior ignores him as best as he can – easy enough to do given how easy it is to slip into a stupor, given how weak he is. Dior counts another five sunrises before he suddenly feels himself being lifted up. The back of his neck braced by a strong hand as the mouth of a waterskin is held to his lips.

“Drink.” Celegorm commands him. Dior does, too weak and muddled to do much else. The muscles of his neck spasm, and he chokes, water spilling from the corners of his mouth. Celegorm frowns, wipes at his lips with something almost like gentleness.

“Careful. You’ll get sick if you drink too much, too soon.” His hand smells like blood. “Are you ready to cooperate? I don’t know how long a half-breed like you will last without food, and frankly I don’t want to risk it.”

Dior spits at him, the mouthful of water spraying across his face. Celegorm stares at him, almost bemused. Dior braces himself, expecting to be hit, but Celegorm just shakes his head, holds the waterskin to Dior’s lips once again.

“You.” Celegorm sighs. “Are entirely too much like your mother.” Dior glares at him, but when Celegorm carefully tips his head back, he drinks.

\---

“I’m not in Ossiriand anymore, am I?” Dior asks after the third or fifth sunset, remembering a cavern and a river but he’s so dizzy and sick he can’t put together the information that he’s got. His face no longer throbs as much, but there’s a big bruise covering his cheek that hurts when he accidentally presses against it in a bid to get more comfortable. At least, he thinks, huddling against the cave wall, Celegorm no longer keeps him gagged when he’s here. Dior would sing a sleeping spell in order to knock him out cold, but he has no strength to sit up, let alone use magic.

Celegorm’s been giving him some water, too. Nowehere near enough, but more than what he used to. Dior’s glad of it, though asking Celegorm to allow him to urinate outside is mortifying. Celegorm had laughed at him but helped him up.

“Like I’d let you stink up the cave.” Dior had flushed, glaring at him, his legs nearly giving way beneath him as he struggled to stand and do his business. Trying to ignore Celegorm watching him with the fascination of a cat toying with its supper.

Celegorm gnaws at a bone with his teeth before answering. “No, you’re not. Haven’t been, for a while now. Perhaps you’ll think twice about escaping if I tell you that you won’t find your way back home even if you tried.” He tosses the bone away. “At least, not before I find you again. And I doubt you’ll survive by yourself on the chance I won’t, if you’re already this weak without eating for a few days.” Dior refrains from telling him that his mother taught him to use the stars as a map, and that his father had taught him how to survive out of doors, in the eventuality that Dior would have need of those skills someday.

 _The best disguise,_ Mother had told him, her eyes dancing and crinkling mischievously at the corners, _is the one they put on you themselves. When they think you’re weak, you can steal into the Enemy’s fortress without him being the wiser._ Dior had been sobbing, then, about not being able to run as fast or be as strong as the other elf children. Mother’s words and kisses had dried the tears up, but she’s not here now. And it’s no longer the elf-children in Ossiriand he’s worrying about.

“You’re taking me to Amon Ereb.” Dior says, remembering where Father told him the Fëanorians’ last stronghold was, after the terrible Nirnaeth Arnoediad. He strains at his bonds. Celegorm shrugs. A graceful movement, oddly lordly for someone who was monster hiding under a thin layer of skin.

“Eventually. Melian’s foresight – or rather, lack of it notwithstanding - your family will have search parties out hunting for you, but this is a deeply hidden part of the forest and if they haven’t found it now, I doubt they will.” He says. “I’m simply lying low and resting. It was no easy feat to pluck you from the outskirts of Doriath undetected.” Dior looks up at him through half-shut eyes.

“My grandmother _is_ looking for me.” Dior says dully. “She’ll know where I am – what you’ve done- and my grandfather will raze your fortress to the ground.” Celegorm _tsks._ He’s picked a bunch of wild apples this time, and the crunch of their flesh beneath his teeth is enough to make Dior’s mouth water pathetically.

“You’re still such a child. Threatening me with a strength not your own.” He tears at an apple. Dior barely stops the whimper in his throat, and refuses to beg. Celegorm’s smile is a grinning wolf’s head that haunts the back of Dior’s eyelids even as he tries to close his eyes, to sleep.

\---

By the fourth sunrise, Dior can no longer move. Celegorm looks at him, sighs.

“The Nandorim forbid hunting in Ossiriand, don’t they?” He asks Dior. He’s roasting another dead animal. A pheasant. Dior had watched him pluck it and grieved dully for it. “And you follow their laws. Surprising, considering what the Iathrim are rumoured to eat. I’m not about to feed you this – it’ll make you sick if you’ve never had it.” He tears into the bird’s flesh. Fat and bloodied juices drip down his chin. He looks at Dior. His face cast half in light and half in shadow by flickering firelight, Dior decides he doesn’t look much like an elf at all. He looks like a monster, the way a puppeteer from home had described in her shadow plays. _One touch hot enough to set the blood boiling in your bones, and once you’re well and cooked through their big hungry jaws will tear at your flesh while you scream and scream –_ the flames had been mere rippling cloth and the shadows made by her puppets, but all the children had been terrified and thrilled in equal measure.

Dior doesn’t answer. His eyes had closed, and he must have fallen asleep, because when he wakes Celegorm is nudging him with his boot, then crouching down to bodily lift Dior up, then prop him against the wall like a training dummy, or a rolled-up carpet. He holds the waterskin to Dior’s mouth. Dior drinks deeply, the water sloshing painfully in his empty belly. He barely has enough energy to swallow.

All too soon, Celegorm takes the waterskin away, chuckling at the look of dismay on Dior’s face.

“How many times do I have to tell you? You’ll get sick if you drink too much or too fast. Here.” Celegorm holds up a small wild apple to him, the skin rosy red, and Dior stares. But he has no energy to even open his mouth, and Celegorm sighs again. Bites into the apple, deep, and starts to chew.

He reaches for Dior, and Dior can’t even lean away. Celegorm’s hands none-too gently forcing his mouth open and he shudders in disgust as Celegorm spits the chewed-up mess of apple and spit into his mouth like Dior had seen the houndskeeper do for a pup that had gotten sick. Holding his mouth closed so he’s forced to swallow. Dior thinks he can taste blood, mixed in with the spittle. He feels sick, but hunger wins out. Celegorm takes another bite of the apple, and Dior opens his mouth. Celegorm continues feeding him like this until the apple is gone. Celegorm snickers, low under his breath when he wipes the corner of Dior’s lips with his thumb and Dior’s teeth scrape his fingers. Unable to jerk his head away as Celegorm grabs his chin, tilts his face up to get a better look.

Celegorm’s eyes are narrowed as he studies Dior’s face. He’s close enough that Dior can feel his breath, hot on his face, rank with the stench of blood and meat and apple, mingled together. Dior grits his jaw as Celegorm twists his head this way and that, like he was a ragdoll that a dog was idly batting with its paws. His grip to Dior’s chin is hard enough to bruise. 

“You look so like your mother.” Celegorm muses. “Lovelier, even. But nowhere near as powerful.” Sudden anger fills him with a surge of strength. Dior responds by lunging forwards and sinking his teeth into Celegorm’s hand, right where the wrist met the curve of his thumb.

The taste of the blood of another is a shock, and Dior almost gags. Celegorm hisses, but Dior holds fast. A madness seizing him like he’d seen happen to one of the hounds back home. Celegorm holds himself still. His eyes wide, watching Dior with anger and amusement, which makes Dior bite down harder, teeth scraping painfully against bone.

Celegorm doesn’t stir, not until Dior has to breathe, has to let him go. Then he promptly backhands Dior across the bruised side of his face, so hard that he blacks out.

When Dior opens his eyes, completely winded, his face aching, he coughs and spits, shuddering in disgust at the taste of mingled rust and apple on his tongue. Trying to ignore Celegorm watching him, his wrist already bandaged. 

“You’re a fierce little pup, aren’t you? Too much your mother’s son, with as little sense as your father.” He grasps Dior’s chin again, his eyes lingering on the bruise. He reaches into his pocket with his free hand, and Dior blinks as he sees a small round metal box. Celegorm releases him, twists it open, and Dior sees it’s full of a yellow salve, catches a whiff of arnica and athelas.

Celegorm huffs out a sound of annoyance, grab’s Dior’s chin again so he can tilt his face to the side. And then he’s smearing the salve over the bruise on Dior’s cheek, and Dior has to stop himself whimpering in relief as the pain eases, Celegorm’s touch oddly light against his skin. 

Celegorm releases him after a moment, his expression pensive.

“It’s no matter. I’m quite good at breaking animals in.” Dior glares at him, his heart pounding.

“You never broke Mother. You won’t break me.” Dior whispers. Celegorm smiles, slow. After a long moment, he releases him.

“We’ll just have to see about that.”

\---

It’s the seventh sunset when Dior feels himself being moved.

He’s too weak to struggle, even though Celegorm has started feeding him – little more than morsels he’s still too weak and exhausted to chew by himself, though the taste of blood in Celegorm’s mouth had already made him retch. He’d expected to be hit for it, or to be left in his puddle of stinking vomit, but Celegorm had let out a sigh of frustration, easing him away from the puddle and washing his face, giving him water. “I don’t want to put up with your stink.” He tells Dior’s confused frown, and that was that. 

The horse whickers softly when Dior is loaded onto him, still trussed-up like a sack of potatoes. Dior strains feebly at the ropes he feels Celegorm wrapping around him, but it’s no good. He passes out. When he opens his eyes, it’s night, freezing cold. The stars are out, and he blinks to keep his eyes from swimming, trying to figure out where he is.

 _Taur-im-Duinath._ Dior guesses, remembering Grandfather’s star-maps. _The Valacirca is to the east, and we’re headed North, to Amon Ereb._ He wonders why Celegorm took such a roundabout route to get back to their fortress, and then he remembers the cavern. _It must be a secret passage that leads to here._ It chills him, that there was a breach in Doriath’s defences that his grandparents hadn’t known about. As soon as he gets out, he has to tell them, straight away.

“Drink this, _huinc_ _ë_.” Dior drags his gaze down to Celegorm’s, then feels a ripple of affront when he recognizes the word as meaning _little pup_ in Quenya. The mouth of the waterskin is pressed against his lips. Dior obeys, coughing and spluttering as the water fills his mouth and he forces himself not to swallow too fast. Celegorm waits for him to stop gasping, holds it out to Dior again. Dior guzzles the water down. Celegorm stoppers it when he deems he’s had enough, then inspects the bruise on Dior’s face. It’s still slightly tender, and Dior breathes as Celegorm applies more of the salve to it, the skin cooling and the pain easing.

Celegorm puts away the salve, then takes a piece of waybread out of his pack, chews it. Dior looks at it pathetically, and Celegorm holds out a piece of waybread to Dior’s mouth. Just out of reach.

“Have you figured out where you are?” Celegorm asks lightly. It takes Dior a moment to realize he’s waiting for an answer, which he doesn’t give him. Celegorm looks more amused at that show of impotent defiance than anything else.

“You were right with your first guess.” Celegorm says. It takes Dior a moment to remember what he’s referring to. “We’ve been out of Ossiriand for a while now. The woods here have Orcs. Goblin-men. Even trolls. Horror after horror. Your grandmother’s magic doesn’t reach here, either.” He lifts the piece of waybread up, waving it around, and Dior almost goes cross-eyed as he follows it with his eyes. 

“I need you to keep your strength up.” Celegorm snorts. “Granted, your parents crept into Morgoth’s stronghold to steal _my_ family’s property for a bride-price. I’m fairly confident you lack just as much sense, but your ability to survive seems considerably lower. For your sake, if not mine, I suggest you stop trying to run away. Or biting me. Unless you want to know for yourself precisely how orcs torture their captives before eating them? Or chaining them to a mountain peak, like they did to my brother.” Dior doesn’t take the bread. He remembers blood. An arrow through his parents’ sigil. Nimloth yelling at him to run.

He forces himself to look at Celegorm. Silver-grey meeting black. He opens his cracked lips, forces himself to speak.

“Either way I’m at a monster’s mercy.” Dior’s voice is strained, rasping as he forces it out his throat. Celegorm grins at him. Dior wonders if Celegorm’s going to hit him again, but he just holds the waybread to his lips.

“Good that you know. Think of it this way - I’m sure you won’t want the next time to see your parents again to be in Mandos. Didn’t they choose the Fate of Men together? I doubt you’ll see them even then.” Dior flinches.

 _I want to go home. I want my mother._ Tears threaten to well up in his eyes, but he blinks them away. Keeping his back straight and reminding himself _I am Dior Eluch_ _íl. I am Thingol’s Heir. I will not cry._

He takes the waybread between his teeth. Celegorm pats him on the head, and Dior glares at him, hating him with every bite.

“Good boy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Celegorm, please stop being a dick. 
> 
> Comments are appreciated. :D


	3. Chapter 3

Dior sits up on the horse, his arms bound behind him, completely miserable. Every now and then he thinks about singing the ropes off and grabbing the reins from Celegorm, but a look around him – at the gloomy trees surrounding them, only specks of blue sky visible through the dark leaves – has him thinking twice. Even if he could get away, full-blooded elves could outrun a horse, and Celegorm seemingly knew this forest like the back of his hand. Dior would be caught within a span of hours, if not minutes, and he’s not particularly keen on being starved again, though the thought of getting Celegorm to chase him down for a few hours is satisfying in a childishly useless way.

He’s not allowed to sing, either. The first time Dior had cautiously started to hum, Celegorm had covered his mouth with his hand.

“Your voice is very sweet, but I know all about your mother’s sleeping spells. Unless you want me to gag you again, don’t sing.” Dior had glared at him, thinking seriously if it was worth it to sink his teeth into Celegorm’s palm, but he had obeyed. Celegorm had pressed down a little before releasing him, satisfied. He’s favouring his right wrist, though from what Dior had seen through narrowed eyes at night while pretending to be asleep, it had already mostly healed. Celegorm would unwind the bandages around it and wash it with boiled water before putting a poultice over it and wrapping it up again, murmuring the words of a spell in Quenya that Dior recognizes as the one Huan had taught his mother. _Well, of course._ Dior thinks. _Huan was his dog, first._ The memory of blood in his mouth makes him feel ill.

Dior keeps silence for a few days. Turning his back on Celegorm when bedding down for the night, his hands curling into fists when Celegorm rifles through his supplies and sighs when Dior’s belly rumbles.

“You are a ridiculously fragile creature.” He complains. “You’ve already gone through a fourth of the supplies I brought, and it’s already mid-autumn. Worse comes to worst you’ll be sharing Rocco’s feed with him.” Dior tries his best to glare an angry hole at the back of his head while taking note of _mid-autumn._ The forest is so dark that he can’t tell how far along the season has turned.

“Maybe you wouldn’t be having this problem _if you hadn’t thought to kidnap me._ ” He’s about to say more but Celegorm rolls his eyes, stuffs a piece of waybread into his mouth. Dior almost spits it at him but thinks better of it, angrily chewing at it and swallowing.

“Your parents – well, your grandfather to be quite honest – only has himself to blame. My brother and I warned Beren what would befall those who would attempt to take the silmarils for themselves.” Celegorm stuffs another piece of waybread into Dior’s mouth. “Now here we are. I’m quite certain I’ve taken something far more precious from him and his precious wife, which I’ll be perfectly willing to return so long as Thingol returns what’s ours.”

Dior glares at him, the effect ruined by his chewing and he can see Celegorm laughing at him. He swallows, speaking with as much poison as he can.

“The only thing we’ll return to the other Fëanorians is your head.” He says. Celegorm rolls his eyes again.

“We’ll see if you have the strength to escape, let alone fight me.” He says. He crams the rest of the waybread into Dior’s mouth. “Your mother had more colourful insults when my brother and I had her locked up. Will you be a pale shade of her even in that? Your father’s blood truly does you no favors, does it?” Dior refrains from kicking him, holding onto a shred of dignity and grace.

“My father strangled your brother, beat him, used _his_ knife to steal your stupid silmaril, and caused the two of you leave Nargothrond in disgrace.” He satisfies himself with saying. “And your dog liked my mother better than you.” He adds as a nasty afterthought. For a moment, Celegorm almost looks hurt at the mention of Huan, and Dior stares at him, feeling absurdly guilty, wondering if Celegorm is going to hit him. But then Celegorm is shaking his head again.

“A child.” He mutters. “An absolute child. You’d better be grateful I’m alone. Curvo wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from gagging you had he been here.”

\--

They ride on. Things become almost… routine. Celegorm leads them deeper and deeper into the forest while keeping Dior tied up on Rocco. Feeding him like clockwork twice a day, untying him only when Dior needs to do his business and (to his mortification) standing guard close by so he doesn’t try to escape. Tying him up again, then helping him off and tossing a fur blanket onto him at night. Dior never feels fully rested, his nights disturbed by horrors that only pale in comparison to the real one he has to face every day. His legs are weak from disuse, saddle-sore and he’s filthy, the smell of his own reek makes him feel sick. But he always tries to remain wide awake during the day, alert for any chance of escape.

So far, there have been none. Celegorm keeps him firmly tied atop Rocco. Once, Dior tried to chant a spell of unbinding when he thought Celegorm had gone off to the woods to hunt. Celegorm arrived just when the piece of rope was about to fray apart. Celegorm had gagged him for three days, refusing to feed him or let him drink the whole time, until Dior was drooping forwards in the saddle, his lips cracked and his eyes glazed, a coal burning in his empty belly.

Celegorm gives him waybread at the beginning of the fourth day, untying the gag and holding it to his mouth.

“Have you learned your lesson yet, or must I starve you for another week?” Dior glares at him, but takes the waybread between his teeth. Hating Celegorm, hating himself. He puts off trying to escape. For now.

The salve that Celegorm had used on him does its job, at least. Dior can’t feel it hurt anymore when he presses against it, though he still feels a little heat. But the pain of his cheek and his empty belly are soon overtaken by other matters. Now that the fright and rush of the past few days – weeks? How long had it been since he’d been taken? - was gone, Dior’s remembering the day of his capture. His guards. How they fell. The orcs that waylaid them. Celegorm appearing, fighting Nimloth while Dior slipped into a poisoned sleep.

“What were you even doing near Doriath?” Dior finds himself asking one afternoon, his tone cool but careful. Celegorm shrugs. The trail takes them down a steep hillside, and he’s careful, holding Dior steady as he guides Rocco through.

“I had duties that took me nearby. You had the misfortune to run into part of those duties.” The orcs. Dior suppresses a shudder at the memory. It was the first time he had seen them up close, their hulking bodies and twisted faces. With a sick swoop of horror, he remembers Mother’s stories about them. How they used to be elves, snatched up by the Dark from the shores of Cuivienen.

He shakes his head, trying to shake the memory out of his skull, to find Celegorm looking at him with something approaching concern. Dior looks away from him, breathing through the hate. The memory of his guards’ corpses, sprawled on the forest floor. Celegorm tugs on Rocco’s reins.

“When the battle sickness hits, count slowly from a hundred, backwards. Remember where you are.” Celegorm says. Dior blinks at him. Then remembers. Dagor Bragollach. The Nirnaeth Arnoediad. Celegorm’s eyes for a moment, look shadowed, like a forest twisted by fire. Dior forces himself not to shrink back.

“Did you kill Nimloth?” He finds himself asking, forcibly keeping any and all trace of fear from his voice. Celegorm raises a pale eyebrow at him.

“She was the sole guard who saw me take you. What do you think?” The wave of sheer loathing that overtakes Dior shocks even him. He looks away. If he speaks, what he says will likely get him slapped, or starved, or worse. They continue on in silence.

Eventually, however, Dior can’t take it anymore. His stomach is growling – again – and his arms are numb from having been tied for so long. He’s lost count of how many sunrises and sunsets there’s been. After a few moments of thought, he swallows his pride and musters a question.

“Can you please untie me?” Celegorm looks at him, expression incredulous. Rocco whickers. Dior tries his best not to look as contemptuous as he feels.

“I promise I won’t run.” Dior says tiredly. “I don’t even know how to get home from here.” The sky had been clouded the few times the tree canopy had cleared, so Dior couldn’t map out where they are with the stars. And it’s not a good idea to attempt to wrestle Celegorm for his sword, or even try to fight him, as weak as Dior still feels. Celegorm looks at him consideringly for a moment. Dior almost gives up with a sigh, but Celegorm’s answer surprises him.

“All right.” Dior blinks at him, but Celegorm’s hands are already untying him. Dior yelps as the blood rushes down, and it’s _agony._ Like fire all the way down his limbs. His eyes water, and he barely stops himself from whispering. Celegorm eases his arms out of the ropes, coiling it up and hooking it to Rocco’s tack.

“That’ll hurt for a while.” He says. He takes Dior’s arms, and Dior bites back a yelp as he starts rubbing at them.

“You have to get the blood running evenly, or your limbs will rot while still attached to you. If you were a full human, you’ll die agonizingly of gangrene. If you were a full-blooded elf, it might take a while longer. You might not even die, but you _will_ be armless forever, unless you wind up in Mandos’ Halls. Which will break your mother’s heart.” Celegorm’s grin is nothing short of ghoulish. Dior glares at him. He’s glared at him more than he has at anyone else in his life.

“Unless _you’ll_ get there before me.” He mutters. Celegorm laughs. He’s still laughing as to Dior’s surprise, he climbs up on the stirrup and mounts Rocco behind him. Dior stiffens as Celegorm takes the reins, practically encasing him in his arms. His back against Celegorm’s broad chest. Celegorm gives him a look.

“Did you honestly think I would let you with your arms free, on my horse? Your family’s history of theft with regards to mine speaks poorly for you.” Dior flushes, and Celegorm laughs at him again, shaking his head. Dior stares ahead of him with as much dignity as he can summon from Thingol and Barahir’s line. Celegorm’s heat behind him. Dior winces, tears pricking his eyes as he gingerly stretches out his arms. Ever-conscious of the monster behind him, its teeth poised above his neck.

\---

The nightmares continue. Dior never sleeps easy, dreaming of blood and red leaves, his friends’ empty eyes as the orcs butchered them. Nimloth’s shouts. The bloodstained muzzle of a wolf, slavering as it closes around his neck. 

One time, he wakes screaming out of a nightmare where he’d run an orc through only to realize it was himself. Hands on his shoulders, a quiet voice telling him to breathe. He’d obeyed, sucking in shaky lungfuls of breaths, one after another, and for one blissful moment he’d thought he was back home, and Father had woken him from a bad dream brought on by too many gruesome stories read before bedtime. Then he’d seen dark eyes, and he’d flinched away before he could stop and remind himself that he was Thingol’s heir.

Celegorm had let him go, and roughly told him to go back to sleep.

Dior’s mind had refused to calm for what remained of the night. Shivering beneath the blankets, and he was still awake when morning broke. Watching Celegorm stoke the remains of their campfire as he heats a pot of water. As Dior watches, he drops several dried flower petals into the pot before letting it steep before pouring the tisane into a bowl. He holds it out to Dior.

“Drink this.” Celegorm says. “It’ll calm you down.”

Dior looks at the bowl and its contents distrustfully. Celegorm sighs.

“You’re still shaking.” He says. Dior didn’t think he could ever sound _gentle._ “This’ll help with that. I can’t have you jumping at the slightest noise. You’ll spook Rocco.” Dior takes the bowl. The petals are unfamiliar, purple and white. Its scent is mildly sweet.

“I’ve never seen this flower before. Did you bring this over from Valinor?” Dior asks, curious in spite of himself. Celegorm takes out the waybread, hands Dior a piece and starts chewing on another.

“Yes. Be grateful, that’s precious stuff. Many of the greenhouses we were growing it in were incinerated at the Dagor Bragollach, along with their keepers. That’s from one of the last vines we were able to rescue.” Dior stares at the tea. He does not drink.

“… It’s the same thing you used to drug me with when you were taking me here, isn’t it?” Dior asks. Celegorm laughs, but it’s a short, clipped sound.

“That one was much stronger, and had other things mixed in to knock you unconscious. This one is what soldiers use to help them sleep at night. Calms you down, but it doesn’t completely leave you insensible.” Dior stares at the tisane.

“You use it too, don’t you?” Dior asks. Celegorm gives him a brief look. As if he can hear the question in Dior’s head. _What do you dream about that is so terrible that it keeps you from sleeping?_

“Drink before I force it down your throat.” Is all he says. After a few moments’ lingering hesitation, Dior lifts the bowl to his lips. The tea doesn’t taste of much, just bitter herbs, but Dior can feel his racing heart slow down halfway through, his choppy breathing calming as he drains it to the dregs. Celegorm watching him closely throughout.

“Better?” He asks. Dior nods after a long moment. Celegorm gets to his feet, takes the bowl from Dior.

“Good. We have a long way to go today. Eat your breakfast.” Dior does, watching Celegorm as he puts out the smouldering fire and pats Rocco’s nose, murmuring something to him that Dior’s too far away to hear. And Dior can feel the tea taking effect when he mounts Rocco, his limbs gone pleasantly warm and heavy, his eyes slipping halfway closed. Unable to keep himself from drooping in the saddle and he’s not entirely sure when his eyes had drifted shut, but when he next opens them, he’s leaning against Celegorm’s broad chest, his head tucked beneath his chin. Celegorm’s arm firm around his waist, keeping him from slipping.

He blinks awake, then sits up so fast he lurches forwards in the saddle, pushing Celegorm’s arm away. Celegorm laughs at him.

“You sleep like an exhausted pup.” He grins. “Your eyes keep closing and you keep rolling forwards.” Dior, his face flaming, stares ahead of him with cold dignity. Celegorm just snickers at him, shaking his head. Dior can feel the huff of his breath, warm against the back of his neck, making him shiver. Dior looks around him, the woods the same too-quiet, dark place, the only sounds in it the beat of Rocco’s hooves, soft on the mulch as Celegorm carefully guides him through crooked deer trails and overgrown paths, along with Celegorm and Dior’s breathing.

The trees grow so thickly together that the sunlight is strangled dim before it even reaches the forest floor. On occasion, pine needles brush against Dior’s cheeks and catch in his hair. Celegorm watches him, as he brushes out his hair with his fingers and braids it, trying to ignore how it hangs heavy and unwashed down his back. He can feel Celegorm’s eyes on him. Specifically, on the back of his neck.

“You have feathers.” Celegorm says. Dior does his best to feign indifference, though something about Celegorm’s overt curiosity has him… wary.

“You just noticed?” He answers. He ties his hair in a knot at the base of his skull, tucking the ends in at the base the way Mother had taught him. By the shafts of weak light piercing through the darkness of the canopy above them, it’s mid-morning. He’s painfully conscious of Celegorm’s eyes on the small, pearl-white feathers that cover his nape.

“How can I not? I wasn’t able to ask because you were either drugged, unconscious, half-dead from hunger, or gagged.” Dior does not deign to give him a glance, even though he can feel Celegorm’s curiosity burning at the back of his head. “How far down do they go? You got them from your mother, didn’t you?” Dior thinks for a moment, then decides there isn’t really any harm telling him.

“Down my back and my shoulders.” He says..“It keeps me warm.” Which was just as well since though his robes were thick, but not meant for the weather beyond early fall. 

“So you never needed the blanket I was lending you. I can get it back.” Dior can’t stop himself from whirling around in protest, though he manages to bite his tongue in time. Celegorm laughs again. Dior can feel the sound all around him.

“I was just teasing you.” He says. The vague hope Dior had that this would be the end of it is shattered by the open fascination in Celegorm’s eyes.

“Your hands are strange, too.” And then Celegorm actually lifts Dior’s hand, grasping him by the wrist before Dior can stop him, inspecting his fingers like he was game that Celegorm had shot out of the sky. Dior jerks back, annoyed, but not before Celegorm’s pressed their palms together, comparing the length of their fingers and the width of their palms. Celegorm’s skin is hot and rough against Dior’s, calloused from sword-fighting and living rough out-of-doors.

“Scaled.” Celegorm murmurs as he holds Dior’s hand up. “Like a bird’s. Your mother’s hands were the same.” Dior wrenches his hand away, his face flaming. Sitting forwards and putting as much distance away from Celegorm as possible. Not much, considering Celegorm’s still holding the reins and holding Dior encased in his arms. Celegorm chuckles.

“You’re like a little bird that fell right into my hand.” Dior glares at him.

“I didn’t fall. You snatched me out of the air.” He says coldly. Celegorm’s dark eyes watch him. In their complete, absolute focus of a hunter, Dior the back of his neck prickling, but he doesn’t look away. His face heats up when a smile curves around Celegorm’s mouth. Dior finds his gaze snagging on it, like a hook digging through skin.   
  
“ _Laerlilin.”_ He says. “Little crane. Your cheeks are red.” He reaches up, brushes his thumb down Dior’s cheek before he can pull away. Dior faces ahead of him, face feeling even hotter. Celegorm laugh is a rumble that Dior feels down his back, warm against his nape.

\---


	4. Chapter 4

Celegorm keeps calling him _Laerlilin._ He keeps asking him questions, too. Some of them are barbed, seemingly innocent queries that Dior can see were really attempts to worm answers on Menegroth’s defences out of him. Dior doesn’t deign him with a response, holding onto sullen silence and ascertaining intent out of Celegorm’s line of questioning. An attack isn’t forthcoming, he figures. Celegorm was simply put, bored, trying to entertain himself, and hopefully discover a weakness of Doriath he can someday exploit. Dior has no doubt that if Celegorm really meant to wring information out of him, he has far more brutally efficient means to do so.

They don’t call him Celegorm the Cruel for nothing.

“What were you doing on the way to Doriath?” He asks. The tone is lazy, as if Celegorm were asking out of idle curiosity. Dior thinks a moment before answering.

“I was on my way to visit Grandmother and Grandfather for Yule.” Dior says. Celegorm guides Rocco over a fallen log. The movement jostles Dior against Celegorm’s chest. Celegorm holds him steady around the waist, his hand warm on his hip, and Dior stiffens a little. Celegorm lets him go when Rocco clears the log, and Dior doesn’t miss the small smirk on his face when Dior looks away too late to hide how his face is flaming.

“So early.” Celegorm comments. “Yule isn’t for another three months or so. Why did you leave Tol Galen so soon?”

 _We always go early. Mother and Father don’t like traveling when it’s too cold._ would have betrayed their failing bodies. Instead Dior shrugs. “I wanted to go by myself.” Celegorm huffs a derisive laugh under his breath. 

“I bet you’re ruing that decision.” Dior doesn’t reply. He deliberately does not think of his friends, dead in the forest because of his insistence. His throat closes up, and he swallows, his eyes burning. Perhaps Celegorm does notice, because he doesn’t ask anything else. Rocco’s hooves muffled by the mulch, and all of a sudden, the silence is too much, too dark and suffocating. Desperate to break the silence, to push away the memory. Dior opens his mouth, thinks for a moment before speaking.

“Can _I_ ask questions?” He asks. His tone is careful, almost nonchalant, half-expecting to be refused. Celegorm shifts, and Dior can feel his heat press up behind him.

“Depends on what the question is.” He says. Dior can feel his breath, hot against the back of his neck. Stirring his hair, and his feathers. The image of a wolf’s bloodied muzzle flashes into his mind, feasting on a deer it had brought down. He bites his lip, thinking. Decides to go with the safest, stupidest one that had been bothering him.

“… Why’d you name your horse ‘Horse’?” He asks carefully. It sounds as ridiculous as it did when he was contemplating it, but it was the question that was least likely to get either himself angry or Celegorm annoyed at him enough to starve him. Dior had recognized the syllables, similar to Sindarin, and had admittedly been rather puzzled.

His answer is an incredulous silence. Celegorm laughs, and Dior feels the heat of it brush against his nape.

“I didn’t name him. Amras did – my younger brother.” He clarifies, though Dior knows who the Sons of Fëanor are by heart. “It was a joke, and it stuck. My hound had a similar name, and that had been gifted him by Oromë, so I didn’t feel the need to change it.” Dior stops, pauses to find something to say to that.

“The gods seem to be terrible at naming things.” Celegorm laughs again. 

“That’s not the only thing they’re terrible at, believe me.” Now his smile is bitter. Dior watches him, head cocked. As curious as Celegorm, if he were to admit it to himself.

“My turn to ask again.” Celegorm says. “I heard Lúthien returned to Middle Earth a mortal woman with Beren. Is this true?” Dior feels his chest constrict.

He wonders how many lines there are on Mother’s face, now. How much greyer her hair has gotten. If the worry has made her frail or sick. Dior blinks away the burn in his eyes, wishing he could tell her _sorry. I should have listened. I love you. I want to go home._

“Yes.” He says. His voice is small. Celegorm looks at him, and Dior makes the mistake of looking up, recognizing it as _sympathy._

Fëanor, Dior remembers, had died in a ball of flame, his _hr_ _öa_ incinerated by the heat of his soul. There had been no body left to bury.

“So they will leave you, soon. “ Celegorm says. Dior stubbornly doesn’t reply. He turns away, stares straight ahead of him.

“Perhaps it’s fortunate that this happened to you, _Laerlilin_.” Celegorm says, his tone almost gentle. “You’ll learn how to survive alone. We all do, at some point.” 

Dior gets used to the weight of Celegorm’s presence. Either behind him, or beside him, a firm hand on Rocco’s reins. The forest is almost unchanging as Celegorm carefully guides Rocco through twisted trails and fallen trees.

Dior’s now the one who can’t stop asking questions, if they weren’t asking each other. Dior’s curious, to tell the truth. The Fëanorians had only ever been figures in a song before, by turns tragic and menacing. Villain he might be, Celegorm has his own stories to tell that Dior wants to hear. If he were being completely honest with himself, he’s eager to know more of the world outside his family’s lands. And Celegorm, for all his cruel mockery, seems as fascinated with Dior as Dior is with him.

(Dior always feels Celegorm’s eyes on him. Dark. Hungry. A predator completely focused on its quarry. It should frighten him, and it does. But more than anything else, it makes him more curious. About what was going on behind that mask hiding a creature closer to an animal than any elf.)

Dior never answers anything that might give a clue about Tol Galen or Doriath’s defences. He just gives Celegorm a lofty, withering look, or says something cutting, which always makes Celegorm laugh. Dior doesn’t fail to notice that Celegorm never seems to get angry at him anymore. It puzzles him, but it also gets him thinking. Neither does he fail to notice that Celegorm’s no longer as harsh or mocking when he helps him off of Rocco, or gives him food to eat.

“You’re the first _peredhel_ there’s ever been in the history of Arda,” Celegorm remarks. They’re seated by the fire, sheltered behind some thick tree trunks. The weather’s steadily getting colder. Dior’s robe isn’t going to be much use when it starts to snow, neither would his feathers. He’d been warming his hands when he felt a warm weight settle over his shoulders. Dior shifted in surprise when he feels Celegorm settle a cloak made of thick fur around him.

“I can’t have you dying of the cold before we get to Amon Ereb, fragile slip of a thing you are.” The cloak dwarfs him – Dior being as slight as he is, and Celegorm as tall. Dior glares at him - resisting the childish urge to stick out his tongue - but snuggles gratefully into the warmth. Celegorm’s smiling, that usual mocking flash of teeth, but Dior’s not certain but he thinks he sees a hint of softness to it.

“How different are you from elf-children? I expect those born the same year as you have just learned how to walk.” Dior nods.

“I age like a human, but I’m not mortal.” He says. He pulls the cloak tight around him. Celegorm looks intrigued. He’s whittling at a piece of wood that Dior had seen him working on while they were resting, on and off, taking off his gloves so he it doesn’t slip out of his grasp. Dior’s watching the knife flash in the firelight as Celegorm works, and he can see it’s a crane, its neck graceful and curved, its wings poised in flight. .

“Age like a human? Does this mean you’ll turn grey and shrivelled like their elderly yet not die?” Dior does not glare at him. Celegorm enjoys riling him up, and Dior been trying not to give him that satisfaction over and over again.

“I don’t know.” He says, and it rankles to admit it. Celegorm holds the crane closer to the firelight. His expression is curious.

“Your _f_ _ëa_ is as bright as a human’s.” He mutters, half to himself. “And you grow faster. Though that doesn’t make you any less vulnerable.” Dior stares at him, then plucks a loose stone from the ground and chucks it as his head. Celegorm evades it, laughing softly. Dior tries to reel in his temper, reminding himself it amuses Celegorm to annoy him _but Eru he can’t help it he just wants to wipe that grin off his face._

“Doesn’t it frighten you?” Celegorm asks. “You’re the first of your kind. You don’t know what’ll become of you. You don’t know what’ll become of your parents, either, when it’s their time to go.” Sudden anger seeps out of Dior like blood from a wound. He holds Celegorm’s expectant gaze, keeping his expression cold, quashing the desire to gather his knees to his chest. Celegorm sees through him, anyway. 

“It does, doesn’t it?” Dior lets out a breath, reining in his anger at the _pity_ in Celegorm’s tone.

“My turn to ask questions,” he snaps. “Not yours. What made you think kidnapping my mother was a good idea?” Celegorm snorts, he glances down at his carving, smoothing out the crane’s wing with the blade, and a curl of wood falls into his lap  
  
“It wasn’t mine. It was Curufin’s.” Celegorm finishes with the wings, starts on the legs. “And he thought of it mostly so we could have access to Doriath’s resources. Frankly speaking, we were also doing Thingol a favour by keeping her in Nargothrond. It was sheer madness for Lúthien to go to the Isle of Werewolves by herself.” He holds the crane away from him, inspecting it. Picking out details on the crane’s legs and claws. “It was far more compassion than Thingol showed our people during the Dagor Bragollach.” A few more strokes of the knife, and Dior sees he’s done, but Celegorm is no longer looking at his carving.

 _The Battle of the Sudden Flame._ Dior remembers Father telling him about it. Fire spilling out the sides of the mountain, decimating the Noldorin host. His father in Nargothrond’s court, telling their King about the task Grandfather had set for him. The Fëanorians, and their challenge. Curufin describing the flight from Ard Galen to Nargothrond, the nightmare of passing through Melian’s Vale. Dior had been perturbed, but when he’d asked Grandfather why he hadn’t let them in, his Grandfather had simply looked at him and said “Doriath would have been overwhelmed, and the Sons of Fëanor couldn’t be trusted. A king decides what’s best for his people, Dior. Even if others might need to suffer.”

It hadn’t felt right then. It doesn’t feel right now. Celegorm’s looking at him. Dior tenses when he sees the shadows shrouding his face, darkening his gaze.

“You think you’re having a difficult time right now?” Celegorm asks. He stands up, stuffing the crane into his pocket and goes to Dior’s side of the fire. Dior doesn’t shrink back, though his gaze flickers to the knife in Celegorm’s hand, wary. Celegorm grabs Dior’s wrist before he can pull away, dragging him forwards. Dior’s breath going sharp with alarm, but he doesn’t cringe away, or flinch.

“Try fleeing from a host of orcs with over a hundred civilians, most of them injured or ill, all of them starving. Slaughter behind us and the horrors of Melian’s Vale before us. Curufin begged Thingol to let us through. To let our people into Doriath, even just the women and children. He refused. Many of them died.” There’s a lump in Dior’s throat that he can’t speak around, and it’s not entirely because of fear.

His friends, screaming. Falling so that they could save him. In his mind, all the women wandering Doriath’s woods have mother’s face. All of them are weeping.

Celegorm’s expression is twisted with rage and memory. He tightens his grip on Dior’s wrist, and Dior is unable to stop himself from tensing up. But Celegorm puts his knife away, tucks a lock of hair behind his ear and folds the cloak tighter around him, studying his face. His expression softening when Dior doesn’t relax. His fingers around Dior's wrist loosen.

“I won’t hit you, _Laerlilin_.” Celegorm says. As Dior watches, Celegorm takes his hand, puts the carved crane in his palm and closes his fingers over it.

His hand without its glove is rough, but warm. Celegorm says nothing else as he returns to his side of the fire. They don’t speak anymore for the rest of the night, but Dior falls asleep while staring at the crane, its wings spread, straining for flight.

\---

They reach a quickly-rushing stream, still half-hidden by shadows half a day later. Dior is relieved to see it. The only bodies of water they’d been coming across lately were tiny rills of freshwater just enough to refill the waterskin and wash their faces and arms with, though Dior had tried to rinse out his hair and braid it so it didn’t hang in a disgusting mass around his shoulders. Celegorm had thrown a blanket over him the previous night and remarked that he stank.

“So do you.” Dior had retorted, half-expecting Celegorm to starve him for the night, but Celegorm had rolled his eyes and given him his waybread. Dior had stayed up long after he’d lain down, watchful for a chance of escape, but Celegorm had sat by the fire, whittling at another chunk of wood he’d picked up earlier. Dior wonders what it’ll be until sleep overtakes him.

The crane Celegorm had given him, he sets beside his head. The sight of it is what he falls asleep to, like it’s a doll he’s using to comfort him.

When he dreams, he’s in Menegroth. It’s dark – all the torches and crystal lamps have been extinguished, and the only light comes from the silmaril Dior holds in his hand. He’s wandering and calling out for his parents and grandparents, but no one answers him. He finally sinks down, arms wrapped around himself at the foot of his grandfather’s empty throne. 

Dior wakes with his face wet with tears, Celegorm’s hand smoothing his hair like he’s gentling a frightened pup. He avoids Celegorm’s eyes when he sits up and wipes his face, mortified. He doesn’t speak to him all morning. Celegorm asks him no questions, neither does he mock him.

They reach the stream. Celegorm dismounts first. . As Dior rubs his aching back, he remembers his grandfather’s maps, thinking of one describing the area to the south of Taur-im-Duinath. Celegorm dismounts and starts rooting through the packs. Dior cranes his neck to watch him, and gets a faceful of folded clothes . He barely catches the small bar of soap that Celegorm tosses to his lap.

“I am going to bathe.” Celegorm says. “So should you, you reek.” Dior can’t help but glare at him. Celegorm shakes his head, but not before Dior notices the look almost like _relief_ that flickers across his features as he takes out clean clothes for himself.

“Needless to say, don’t try to escape. The water gets treacherously deep further downstream, and it ends in a waterfall that has sharp rocks at the bottom.” Dior frowns. He dismounts, his knees almost giving way beneath him. Only his pride keeps his teeth gritted, keeps him standing.

“There are no waterfalls in Taur-in-Duinath.” Celegorm shrugs as he begins to remove his light armor.

“None that many mapmakers know of. Only the Avari have explored this place thoroughly, and they’re not about to give up these secrets. Why do you think your grandfather’s men haven’t found you yet?” He tosses his armor by the streambank, before the dirt gave way to mud, starts to strip his clothes off.

“As flattered as I am that you want to watch, you really need to take a bath yourself.” Dior blinks, remembers himself and averts his gaze. The familiar sound of Celegorm’s barking laughter follows him all the way to the stream’s edge. The water is freezing, and his legs feel like they’re on fire and about to crumble to ash, but Dior makes sure his expression doesn’t change, that he doesn’t collapse as he wades in. It’s not like he hasn’t bathed in a cold stream before. His parents used to take him out playing in the river Adurant before the cold became too much for his father’s knees.

The cloth of his robes is stiff with sweat and dirt as he unties it and shrugs it off his shoulders. His underrobe is little better. Dior piles it on top of a rock with a relatively flat surface before sinking down, scrubbing at himself vigorously beneath the water with the bar of soap he’d been given. He takes a deep breath before submerging his head, working the suds into his hair and raking his fingers against his scalp as he lets the current wash over him. Rinsing out his mouth, nevermind the bitter taste of minerals and soap. He wishes he could cover preen himself, straighten out the feathers that had been bent and disaligned with his fingers, but he satisfies himself with lathering himself. The faster he moved the sooner he could dress. The sooner he can shield himself from Celegorm’s dark gaze, watching him as intently as Dior’s keeping his attention on him.

Dior deliberately turns his back to Celegorm, shivering not just because of the cold. He grabs his dirty things and scrubs at the crustier places with the bar of soap, squeezing the water out as best as he’s able. _I’ll dry these out by the fire tonight._ He squeezes the water out of his robes, and unable to help himself, glances behind him, then stops. Stares.

Celegorm’s submerged in the water up to his waist, his hair wet. On his torso, his arms, scythe thick burn scars, shiny and stark against his tanned skin. The skin is reddened, discolored. The skin 

“Like what you see?” Dior is too horrified to turn away, his gut churning. Almost all of Celegorm’s torso is covered in the scars. Thick, uneven, and discoloured in patches. Dior remembers it as treatment from a medical treatise he’d read about victims of horrific burns. New skin would be wrapped around burns too deep to allow to heal on their own. They look horrible now. They definitely looked worse when they were healing. Dior doesn’t even want to think of what it must have felt like.

Dior opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Celegorm’s eyes have gone sharp and flinty, but Dior stands down instead of shrinking back when Celegorm advances on him. A flicker of surprise, and then Celegorm’s crowding him against the rock where he’d placed his clothes.

“Don’t look away.” Even in the water, Celegorm towers over Dior. Dior has to crane his neck up to look him in the eye, to not look at the horror of his chest. “ _These_ are nothing. My eldest brother’s scars are far worse. _Those_ he got thanks to Morgoth’s personal attention in Angband. _I said don’t look away._ ” Suddenly Celegorm’s hand tightens on the back of Dior’s neck, and he yanks Dior forwards. Startled only Dior’s outstretched palms keep him from crashing into Celegorm’s chest. All too aware that they’re both naked, and as Celegorm’s gaze flicks down his body, that he’s horribly, terribly vulnerable.

A smirk twists Celegorm’s mouth. Mingled fury and what Dior realizes is _lust_ in his eyes. His fingers grip Dior’s neck hard enough to bruise. Preventing him from getting away.

“Do you know these are scratches compared to the ones Caranthir got during that first attack? Took him out of the battle early because half the skin off his body was burned off. We still don’t know how he survived. _Don’t look away.”_ Celegorm shakes Dior. Dior’s eyes sting, but he forces himself not to close them, though that’s all he wants to do. Celegorm’s ruined skin is hot and rough beneath his palms.

“What about my cousins? Aegnor and Angrod. As brave as your beloved parents, both of them worth more than your grandfather, in Melian’s keeping like a cosseted gem. Aegnor wound up with an arrow in his throat. That was merciful. That was quick. His body could still be recognized. But Angrod?” Celegorm’s grip hurts. “Angrod’s horse was overtaken by molten fire with him still on it. He died shrieking.” There’s a wild, almost frantic rage in Celegorm’s eyes. Something terrible and dark, straining desperately against his own skin, his own fate in helpless fury. Searching for something in Dior’s gaze that Dior can’t give him.

The echo of his friends’ screams. The orc arrows whizzing past. Blood, so much blood. Dior wills his himelf not to shake. Celegorm’s chest and side are all scars. The weight of his hand on the back of Dior’s neck, grasping hard enough to bruise. How very small Dior is, compared to Celegorm.

“My brother’s son was your age when Curufin tried to beg for safe passage through the Girdle. Do you know how many innocent bones rot in Doriath’s forests because of his refusal to let us through? Do you know how many fathers lost their daughters that day? To death, and worse? And that didn’t come close to the slaughter of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.” Celegorm’s face is twisted into a snarl, and Dior knows he’s not seeing him, not really.

 _When the battle-sickness overcomes you, count backwards from a hundred to one._ Dior can see it, behind his dark, dark eyes. His heart is thudding like a frightened rabbit’s in his chest, and he’s horribly aware those strong fingers can snap his neck like a twig, but he doesn’t look away, knowing it’ll make Celegorm angrier if he does. He casts his mind about, but there are no words in the careful arsenal of diplomacies that Thingol had taught him for this anger. There’s only one thing he can think to say.

“I’m sorry!” He blurts out. He’s not sure if it’s on Grandfather’s behalf, or his own, or for Celegorm himself. “I’m so sorry!” The words sound flimsy to his own ears, sharp and too-high, sickeningly frightened.

He braces himself for Celegorm to hit him. For his grip to turn choking. Or maybe for Celegorm to hurt him the worst way he knew how, what he intended to do to Mother. And then Celegorm lets him go. Dior sinks into the water, his breathing labored and unsteady as Celegorm turns away from him and heads for the stream bank. Only when he’s gathered his knees to himself does Dior realize he’s shaking.

Dior takes a few moments to breathe, to compose himself before reaching for Celegorm’s clothes. Stumbling to the stream-bank and getting dressed, his neck throbbing, his legs barely holding him up. Celegorm’s trousers are far too long for him, and he has to roll them up several times before he can stuff his feet into his boots.

Celegorm’s already dressed and tying his vambraces back on by the time Dior stumbles up towards Rocco, holding his wadded-up robes. Dior wills himself not to flinch, or to take a step back when Celegorm’s dark eyes snap towards him, but he holds himself away at a far enough distance that he can run when needed. His own pulse betraying him, Celegorm staring at it before meeting his gaze. At the reddened marks left on Dior’s throat. The slight tremble along his shoulders that only gets worse the more he wills it to stop.

Celegorm looks away from Dior before he can figure out the expression on his face. He takes Dior’s robes, puts in in an empty satchel and hangs it on Rocco’s tack.

“We need to get out of here before nightfall. This is not a safe place in the dark.” Dior’s lips quiver like his legs.

“Anywhere with you isn’t safe.” Celegorm freezes. Dior braces himself to be slapped, or hurt. Taking another step back when Celegorm reaches forwards, but instead of a blow he feels careful hands supporting him as his knees give under his weight. When he’s too weak to mount Rocco, Celegorm’s hands are careful, almost gentle as he helps him up and drapes his fur cloak around Dior’s shoulders. 


	5. Chapter 5

It’s been two days after the incident by the stream. Dior hasn’t been speaking to Celegorm, and Celegorm hadn’t seemed interested in breaking the silence. He walks beside Rocco, keeping pace, his hands on the reins. Dior avoids his gaze and the brush of his hands. He’d gone to bed that night curled up under his blankets, barely able to feel the warmth of the fire as he keeps as much distance between them as he’s allowed.

When he woke up struggling out of harsh hands and teeth tearing into his guts, it’s to find Celegorm had carried him closer to the fire, and had draped his already-dry robe over him. Dior had blinked, staring at his hands, encased in gloves. Gloves that he recognizes is made out of the same leather of Celegorm’s hooded cloak. Celegorm looks at him from where he’s tending the pot over the fire.

“Your hands were freezing.” Celegorm says briefly. He pours out the contents of the pot into the bowl, hands it to Dior. It’s more of the tisane he’d given him before. “That’ll help with your throat, too.” Dior swallows, and it hurts, but the pain eases after he drains the bowl dry. The gloves fit him perfectly, snug and warm. He wonders when Celegorm had started making them.

The same thing happens that night. Dior falls asleep with his back to Celegorm and wakes up shivering, to find himself in a spot comfortably near the curling heat of the flames. Celegorm tucking his fur cloak around him, and Dior had stared at him, too drowsy and confused to struggle away. 

“Go get some more sleep. You were tossing and turning all night.” Dior had blinked at him, too exhausted to do anything but obey. 

That afternoon, when they were back on the road, Dior had been unable to stop himself from touching the marks Celegorm’s fingers had left on his neck. They hurt when his fingers brush against them, making Dior wince. Catching Celegorm watching him, and he stares him down with as much strength as he can muster, heart beating hard at the memory of hard fingers on his throat. A hand striking his face, dragging him forwards. Celegorm sighs, stops Rocco with a tug of his reins and opens one of the saddlebags. Takes out the salve again. He dips his fingers, scoops out a small amount and reaches for Dior, and Dior flinches.

Celegorm freezes. Dior’s breath catches in his throat, and he eyes him warily. After a moment Celegorm wipes his fingers on the rim and passes him the jar. Dior doesn’t look away as he takes it from Celegorm and takes some of the ointment, smearing it on the tender places on his throat.

“Thank you.” Dior says. The ointment burns cool on his throat, and immediately draws the pain away. Celegorm takes the jar, then frowns. Dior tenses.

“You missed the back.” Celegorm says. His voice is oddly gentle. Like he was, Dior figures, quieting an animal struggling in a trap, and he just stops himself from shivering. He reaches for the back of his neck, where Celegorm’s fingers had dug into the flesh. Celegorm shakes his head.

“No. Here. Let me do it.” He reaches forwards. This time Dior does not draw back as Celegorm touches him. His fingers light on Dior’s skin, lifting his feathers as he smears the ointment against his bruised flesh. When Celegorm’s touch remains light, the tension along Dior’s spine eases, and he lets out a breath.

“Your feathers are soft.” Celegorm murmurs. Dior flushes in spite of himself, heat crawling up his neck and cheeks.

“They’re feathers. What do you expect?” He mumbles. His blush deepens when Celegorm laughs, quieter than he’s ever heard it. He feels Celegorm gently stroking up, brushing against where feathers meet his hairline and turn to down. He takes his hand away, but after a moment of hesitation, Dior turns around. Holds his gaze. Just for a moment, before Celegorm looks away.

“What do you want, _Laerlilin_?” Celegorm asks, tucking the jar back into the saddlebag. “You look like my youngest brother did whenever he wanted something.” Dior thinks for a moment. Thinks of answering _my freedom_ but that wouldn’t really get him anywhere.

 _The best disguise is the one they put on you themselves._ Dior thinks of Celegorm’s barbed insults. Of him holding Dior up in his saddle. Of that morning by the stream. He thinks of Celegorm’s eyes on him, his fascination with Dior’s feathers. With everything he was. His desire, and his cruelty, his strange gentleness.

_Mother faced Morgoth by herself, the monster to end all monsters. You can face this one._

“I want to walk.” Dior says. Celegorm snorts. “Please,” he says, allowing his voice to turn pleading but not affected to the point of sickly-sweet insincerity. The way he did whenever he was cajoling Mother and Father to _please let me run a bit further ahead,_ _it’s safe here anyway._ “I’m tired of riding. I promise I won’t run.”

It works. Dior can see the brief internal struggle he could usually see in Father– that voice never worked on Mother – before Celegorm sighs, and caves in.

“Can I trust you not to flee?” Celegorm asks in turn. But he lets him, helping him down the horse. Dior feels a moment of solid triumph before his knees give out the first time his feet touch solid ground in who knew how long. Celegorm steadies him, keeping his knees from crumpling. The top of Dior’s head barely brushes against his chin, and Dior clings to his forearms, wincing as he tests his weight on legs gone weak and wobbly from weeks of disuse.

“Careful,” Celegorm says. His grip is very gentle as he holds Dior steady on his feet.

\---

It takes a while for the strength to return to Dior’s legs, and on occasion, he finds himself back astride Rocco, his legs aching, behind him. Celegorm’s body emanates heat, and as the weather steadily gets colder Dior has to constantly remind himself not to lean against him, but he still has nightmares most nights. The following mornings find him he drifting off and waking to find himself resting heavily against Celegorm’s body, his head practically tucked under his chin, Celegorm’s arm around his waist and holding him up. Sometimes he pulls away. More often than not, he’s too tired to do anything but sink into the warmth and allow it to carry him off.

Dior keeps asking Celegorm questions. Celegorm answers them. Sometimes, he gives a frustratingly evasive response – usually pertaining to their location. Most of the time however, he speaks frankly. An older brother used to his little brothers’ badgering. As fall edges firmly into winter and they continue deeper into the forest, Dior tries to fit the pieces of Celegorm together in his head.

“What happened to your seventh brother?” Dior asks one night. He’s fiddling with the crane Celegorm had carved for him, stroking its feathers. Celegorm’s carving at another block of wood again. It’s a dove, this time around, perched on a delicately flowering branch. His expression shutters as he looks up. Dior almost backs off, but presses forwards. “The songs I heard were never very clear about it. I just heard he died first.” Celegorm shrugs.

“You’re asking how he died? He burned to death.” Celegorm looks at his carving. “He was hiding in the belly of one of the swan ships when Father ordered them set on fire.” Dior’s eyes widen with horror.

“Why?” He blurts out. Celegorm raises an eyebrow at him, working on the petals of the flowers. Dior notices he’d carved even the bed of pollen at the center of each blossom, but the whole thing put together is lovely, but slightly skewed. Celegorm had carved it out of one piece of birch, the dove formed from a burl and the cluster of flowers at the end, a little too far from each other to look balanced.

“He got into an argument with my eldest brother. “ Celegorm shapes a bud with the edge of his knife. “About sending the ships back to fetch Uncle Nolofinwë and the rest. He didn’t want to risk the soldiers mutinying in Uncle’s favour. A strong likelihood, given there was talk among the others of abandoning the quest and returning to Valinor.” Dior stares at him, equal parts sickened and saddened. 

“But. Your brother. Why was he even hiding?” At that, Celegorm falls still. He’s staring at the carving, like he’s trying to figure out how to make the best of it.

“He wanted to go home.” He says. A few more strokes of his chisel, and the dove is free. “Just like you. Which is why I always keep you in my sights, to keep you from getting yourself killed by your stubborn stupidity.” Dior blinks, his chest going tight. Well. That would explain the odd protectiveness. Celegorm is silent for a moment, like he’s wondering whether he’s said too much. Then he shrugs, hands the dove to Dior. Dior takes it. It fits neatly into the palm of his hand.

“Umbarto. The Fated One.” Celegorm chuckles. The sound is bitter. “Neither Maitimo nor Makalaurë noticed he had gone. I probably wouldn’t have, either, if Amras hadn’t dragged me to go looking for him when he couldn’t find him.” Dior turns the dove over. Celegorm’s shortening and shaping the end of the other piece.

“Up till that point, they had always been together.” For a moment, he thinks he sees a younger Celegorm in his mind’s eye, his features just as wild but softer, more innocent, running at the heels of a boy with bright red hair, frantically searching amongst the crowded shores of Losgar. The faces of the multitude distorted by firelight.

“What did your father do, after?” Celegorm holds the carving up, turning it in his hands. _A hairpin._ Dior thinks.

“He led us on our way, as you well know.” Celegorm puts it away, and Dior feels oddly disappointed. “No choice on the matter. When you’ve gone this far, you can’t stop.” Celegorm glances up at him. “You’ll understand, someday.”

 _I don’t want to understand._ Dior thinks but does not say. Celegorm asks him no questions that night. As Dior beds down, he can see him staring at the fire, sunk deep in memory. Sometimes, when Father went quiet and his mind far away, Mother sat beside him and held his hands. Not singing, not speaking, just staying with him until the shadow lifted off his shoulders. Dior stares at the two little carvings Celegorm had given him, biting his lip.

Celegorm starts a little when Dior drags the cloak and blankets over beside him. He looks surprised. Dior finds that he likes seeing that expression on Celegorm’s face. For once he’s the one who’s sent Celegorm off-kilter.

“What are you doing? You’re normally curled up like a sleeping pup by now.” Dior shrugs, sits cross legged and wraps the thickest blanket, and the cloak around himself.

“You look like you need company.” He says. Celegorm stares at him, and he stares back. His face heats up a bit, but he doesn’t break his gaze. Celegorm does, turning back to the fire.

“Suit yourself.” He says. “You’ll be the one too sleepy to make an escape attempt tomorrow.” Dior resists the urge to kick him. He watches the fire with Celegorm, and he’s not quite certain when his eyes close. When he wakes up, his eyes streaming and his dreams full of red, his head is cushioned on Celegorm’s lap. Celegorm’s running his fingers through his hair, scratching gently at the back of his neck. Soothing him as he turns away and catches his breath, wiping his face clean of tears. 

\-----

One day, Dior asks Celegorm about Valinor.

“What was Oromë like?” he asks carefully. They’re sitting by a fire, Dior with a blanket draped around his shoulders, munching on fruit and sipping at a thin soup made of boiled roots that they had managed to forage earlier. He had bolted down his share when he’d gotten it, starving for something other than waybread, the boiled tuber burning his fingers as he bit into it, and Celegorm had taken one look at him and given him his.

“There’ll be less to eat from this point on. Eat everything, you need to keep up your strength.” Dior had stared at him. Though he would have been happy to eat the whole portion, the sense of fairness that Mother and Father had drummed into him kept him from taking the bowl.

“You need it, too.” Celegorm had shoved the bowl under his nose, annoyed.

“Go on. You’re likelier to keel over from starvation than me.” Dior does not take the bowl. Celegorm lets out a frustrated sigh.

“You look like your mother did when we locked her up. Will you just _eat_.” Dior is undeterred. Pursing his lips and putting on the most stately, steely look he remembers Grandfather teaching him. Celegorm gives in with a shake of his head, but he’d devoured his share. Dior had felt absurdly satisfied.

(It was the first time he’d gotten Celegorm to do as he said. Dior looks away and deliberately thinks of something else when he finds himself watching the flash of Celegorm’s sharp teeth far too closely for comfort.)

“He was pleasant enough.” Celegorm says. “A good teacher. Of course, when we needed his help the most he refused to give it. But that seems to be par for course for the Ainur.” The bitterness bleeds from him like black poison, and from here Dior can see an odd, near-tangible shadow shrouding his face.

Dior remembers the Oath. Fëanor. The silmaril his parents had won from the Dark Lord. He decides it’s best to distract Celegorm from that memory. “We have a story that’s a little bit about him.” Dior says. “Well, not really him. His Maia. After a fashion.” Celegorm raises his eyebrow.

“Many of the Sindar’s tales about the gods are fanciful things spun from the storytellers of Cuivienen.” He says, but the shadow passes. He leans back on his elbows, setting aside his carving knife and the piece of wood he’d been fiddling with – Dior can make out the shape and contours of yet another bird, poised in flight – and raises his eyebrow at Dior. “Which is to say, lies. But go on. Entertain me.” Dior suddenly feels very self-conscious, he straightens his back, gathering his thoughts and the memory of Mother’s stories. Pretending he’s back in Tol Galen and he’s reciting those stories to the younger children, though the fact that Celegorm actually knows one of the characters will doubtless wind up with him laughing at Dior when it’s over.

“Once upon a time,” Dior begins. “There was a little elf-maid.”

“She was a pretty girl, the only child of her parents.” Dior’s voice very carefully doesn’t catch. “But the person who loved her most was her grandmother, who spun her a hooded cloak of red velvet to keep her warm during winter.” Celegorm’s eyes have gone sharp and focused. Dior feels his face warm, but continues.

“All the birds and beasts loved her, but there was one beast that her parents told her to never, ever speak to.” Dior says. “And it was the great wolf that prowled the borders of her forest home. She had never seen it herself.” His hands tighten on his robes. “But in the dead of night it would come. First it stole her mother’s chickens. Then it stole her father’s horses. Her parents feared it would take her, so they forbade her from going out in the forest when it was dark. She loved them, so she obeyed.” Dior’s voice cracks, just a little.

“ _Laerlilin…_ ” Celegorm begins, but falls silent. Dior stares into the fire. He wonders if he should continue, but he’s already begun this, so he must finish.

“But one day, her grandmother got sick. And the elf-maid’s parents couldn’t make the long walk to her dwelling since there was much to do around their own little house. So the elf-maid told her father she would go and take care of her until she was well. Her parents – her parents didn’t want her to go. But she insisted on going by herself.” Dior reaches into his pocket, takes out the wooden carvings. Stares at them so he doesn’t have to look at Celegorm’s face.  
  
“So during the morning, when the sun was up and the sky was bright, she went into the woods, dressed in her red cloak and carrying a bottle of medicine and food for her grandmother. Her grandmother’s dwelling was a long way away. She grew lonely on her walk, so she started to sing. To her surprise, another voice answered her.”

“She was surprised, but she sang back. And then a handsome young hunter appeared , slipping between the trees like a shadow. He was smiling at her as he bowed.

“Little girl, I am Oromë’s hunter, on an errand for my master. Are you lost?” The elf-maid shook her head.

“No, kind sir. I am off to see my grandmother.” The hunter’s smile widened.

“Little girl, I know these woods like the back of a wolf’s paw. Do you need someone to show you the way?” But the girl remembered her father’s warnings, and shook her head.

“No, kind sir. I know the way by myself.”

“Little girl, I know you can make your way home if you must, but do you want company so you won’t be alone?” And the elf-maid’s cheeks colored, but he was handsome, and kind, and so she agreed.

“They talked for a long, long time under the trees. So long that the elf-maid didn’t notice it was getting dark. But she did notice that the hunter’s shadow had changed. He walked a little ways behind her, and his footfalls were quiet on the forest floor, and his breathing had turned to pants.

“I am hungry.” He said. “So hungry.” And the little elf-maid’s heart goes still in her chest. Because only now does she realize that he was the wolf her parents had warned her about. He was about to catch her in his arms when she slipped away.

“She ran. But the elf-maid forgot what the wolf told her. That he knew the forest like the back of a wolf’s paw. His paw.” Dior swallows. “When she got to her grandmother’s cottage, her grandmother was in bed. Shaking, she locked the door.

“Oh grandmother.” She said. Her grandmother coughed weakly, opened her arms.

“Little girl, did you get lost?”

“Yes, grandmother. I tarried too long in the woods and didn’t notice I was being led deeper and deeper within it.” Her grandmother held her arms open.

“Little girl, I know the beat of your heart like the blood in my ears. Are you frightened??” The little elf-maid took off her cloak and hung it on the foot of her grandmother’s bed before sitting beside her.

“’Yes, grandmother, I didn’t know the shadows could be so long and the path so dark.’ The grandmother held her arms open, still.“

“’Little girl, I know you like the song of my soul. Did you meet the wolf your parents warned you about?’ The little elf-maid shivers, and lets her grandmother hug her in her arms.”

“’Yes, grandmother. He was what frightened me so. He is waiting for me in the shadows, in the woods still.’ The grandmother’s voice quavers.”

“’Surely not. Surely he knows better than to follow you to your grandmother’s house, to eat her up and dress in her clothes, and wait for you in her bed.’ And only then does the little elf-maid see that her grandmother’s eyes have gone golden, that her white hair has turned to fur, and her smile has turned sharp and rank with blood.”

“And the wolf smiled and smiled as he held her in his arms and ate her all up.” He finishes. Back at home he had sunk into Mother’s stories so deeply that he’d always resurfaced, blinking, slightly surprised to find himself tucked warm in bed instead of out in the middle of a cold, dark wood. But he’s the one who stumbled into one of Mother’s stories - The branches heavy with night abovehead, and a monster, pale and real and straight out of a poem, before him.

“…That’s not how it ends.” Celegorm says. He sounds. Almost angry. Dior doesn’t flinch. He just watches him quietly, remembering the hands that had struck him across the face and almost crushed his throat. 

“That’s the story the way Mother’s nurse told her, and what she told me.” Dior cocks his head to the side, questioning. “Unless yours has a different ending?” Celegorm is silent. Dior waits for a moment, watching the tense, unhappy set of his jaw, then decides to press on.

“How does yours end?” He asks. Celegorm’s expression flickers with something approaching guilt. He stares at the fire, his voice tight when he continues.

“Oromë’s hunter and the wolf are different people.” He says brusquely. “She meets the hunter first before the wolf, and he manages to get to the house on time. He slits open the wolf and plucks the girl’s grandmother out of his belly. He gets married to the girl and from then on, he protects her when she goes out to the woods.” He looks up at Dior. “The hunter and the wolf – they’re not supposed to be the same thing.” Dior looks at him. Perhaps it’s a trick of the firelight, but there’s something almost frantic in his gaze. Almost pleading.

“… That’s the only story I know.” Dior says. He wonders why it sounds almost like an apology. Celegorm is silent. His knuckles are white. Then he gets to his feet, so fast that Dior recoils. Celegorm freezes for a moment, then heads for the trees. Leaving Dior blinking after him.

He debates with himself, whether he should run now. Staring at the fire and willing himself to move, and in the agony of his indecision Celegorm returns. Composed now, but there’s a tension along his back and shoulders

“Go sleep. We have a long way to go.” He takes his knife, and the bird he’s carving. “We’ve dawdled too long in these woods.” Dior watches him, the knife biting into the wood with more force than necessary.

“… Maybe the hunter can choose to stop being the wolf.” He blurts out. Celegorm stares at him. Dior stares back, his heart pounding in his throat.

“Go to sleep, _Laerlilin_.” He says nothing else. Does nothing else. Dior lies down, covers himself with the blanket. When he wakes, it’s dawn, and Celegorm has draped an additional cloak over him, which does little to stop his shivers. A little carved wooden heron with sits beside his head, its neck curved and its wings raised. Dior looks at it for a long time before slipping it into his pocket with the rest.

\--

Celegorm is quiet the day after Dior tells him the story. Pensive. Dior wonders just what he’s thinking about. Clearly the story had struck a chord. Dior hadn’t really expected it. The Celegorm in his head, in the Iathrim’s songs had been little more than the slavering wolf in Mother’s story. Thinking back to when they first met, he had been every bit the monster the songs described. But there had been a time when he wasn’t. Dior is certain of this, in the same way he’s certain that perhaps, there was still some of that person left.

Perhaps. Dior thinks to Mother’s words, again. _Your weakness is your strength._

He’ll take what he can get.

“You can run ahead if you want, _Laerlilin_.” Celegorm tells him abruptly. Dior turns to look at him, surprised. Celegorm rolls his eyes.

“You heard me right. You can run around. Stretch your wings.” He dismounts, lifts Dior down and makes sure the cloak is well-tied. “But come back – follow the trail, don’t try to disappear behind the trees. Don’t even think about trying to escape or I’ll keep you tied up for the rest of the way. It’s going to start snowing soon and I’m sure you won’t want to spend the winter here with next to nothing to eat.” Celegorm had saved the rest of the waybread for him. He’d taken a look at their supplies, frowning, and had shaken his head.

“We need to make this last all winter.” He’d muttered. Dior had been confused at first, but when they stopped for their midday meal, Celegorm had given him his share of the waybread and had eaten nothing else but the handful of nuts he’d been able to forage from an unfortunate squirrel’s hoard earlier that day.

“I’ll hunt for myself later.” He’d told Dior when Dior tried to offer him half his waybread, out of a sense of fairness. Dior had tucked the waybread into his hand anyway. Aware of how Celegorm’s had looked both exasperated and hopelessly fond.

He’s still wearing the gloves Celegorm made for him, and his fur cloak. Dior had tried to return the cloak to him, but Celegorm had refused to take it back. _You need it more._ He’d been saying that more and more often as of late.

Celegorm’s watching him now. Dior tries to ignore him as he takes one hesitant step, then another. And then his feet are flying. His heart soaring in his chest as his feet barely touch the dead grass beneath them, encrusted with frost. The wind in his hair and in his robes as he leaps over fallen logs and darts through the trees, heedless of Celegorm’s warnings.

He can hear Celegorm behind him, and he puts in another burst of speed. As fast as he’s running, he can tell he won’t be able to outrun Celegorm. He pays him no mind. Running until there’s a stitch in his side and his breath comes in gasps, letting go of everything but the sensation of speed that was almost flight.

And then he stops, and at the same moment, Celegorm manages to grab him around the waist. Dior’s back slamming against his chest and Celegorm’s grip heavy on his shoulders as Celegorm turns him around, yanks his chin up so Dior is forced to look him in the face.

Celegorm is livid. “What did I tell you about trying to escape?” Celegorm growls. And in response, Dior laughs, breathless. Laughs and laughs, for the sheer simple joy of it, and he just realizes it’s the first time he’s done so in a very long time. 

Celegorm is frowning, but his grip has gentled. “Why are you laughing?”He asks, his tone careful. Dior shrugs, breathing hard from exertion, stifling the giggles that threatened to burst out of him.

“I – I don’t know.” Dior says. And he really doesn’t. But he grins at Celegorm, and by the momentary way Celegorm goes slack-jawed Dior’s certain Celegorm will do none of what he had threatened.

Celegorm recovers himself. “… You weren’t trying to escape.” Celegorm says. Dior’s stopped laughing now, but he’s still smiling, watching Celegorm as carefully as Celegorm is watching him. They’re standing very close together. Dior can feel his heat emanating from his body, his hands, his right on Dior’s shoulder, his left now curved around Dior’s cheek. Dior feeling his face heat, his guts churning. His smile fading as he remembers his guards’ screams.

“… Let’s go, _Laerlilin_.” Celegorm says. He lets go of Dior. He glances at Dior, expecting him to follow, and Dior does. Thinking for a moment before slipping his hand into Celegorm’s.

Celegorm stiffens in surprise. Dior watches him, wondering what he’ll do. After a few moments, Celegorm’s hand tightens around his. He doesn’t let go of Dior, even after they reach the place where Rocco had been left standing. Celegorm’s grip heavy on Dior’s waist as he lifts him up onto Rocco, gets up behind him. For once, Dior doesn’t pull away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dior's story was a combination of Angela Carter's "In the Company of Wolves" and Taga-Bakod's bastardization of Red Riding Hood. We basically thought up of two versions, the original being a dark version that's a cautionary tale among the elves of Cuivienen who were being hunted down and lured away by Melkor, and the Valinorean version that had been considerably lightened up and given a happy ending. According to Taga-Bakod, there really are older versions of Red Riding Hood where wolf and the hunter are the same person. Instead of a hunter saving her, Red gets help from a bunch of washer-women by the river, who make her a bridge out of their laundry which they collapse upon the wolf's crossing, drowning him. 
> 
> Hope you guys are enjoying the fic thus far. Comments are appreciated. :D


	6. Chapter 6

He doesn’t stop asking questions. They’re by another stream, warming themselves by a fire after having bathed. Celegorm had wrapped Dior in his fur cloak almost as soon as he’d dried himself off and dressed.

“In Valinor, my brothers and my cousins would strip and dive naked into the river just before it froze over.“ He snickers at the incredulous expression on Dior’s face and ruffles his hair, the pad of his thumb gliding down the back of Dior’s neck before he drops down to sit beside him. Dior neatens his hair, glaring at him, his cheeks warm and he looks away when Celegorm’s grin broadens. “After a few minutes, we would head to the steam baths, and there would be mulled wine and roasted meat waiting for us. My cousins, however, lost all their love for the cold after the Helcaraxë.”

“…. What was it like? Crossing it.” Dior asks, treading carefully. “Did they ever tell you?” The Lady Galadriel had spoken about it before, when curiosity had made him approach her. She’d given him a brief look and had led him to her gardens. A silver bowl sat on a plinth in the middle of it, the moon and the stars reflected in its depths. Dior had looked into it and wished he’d never asked.

Celegorm shrugs. “They starved.” He says bluntly. “Had to eat their own dead, at some point. My cousin Aredhel broke my nose with her fist when we saw each other again. Not that I could blame her. They were. Much changed when they finally made their way here.” Celegorm leans back on his elbows. “Then again, so were we.” Dior’s stomach churns as he remembers the white ice he’d seen in Galadriel’s mirror. Red blood, pain. A jumble of horror and desperation and anguish. The Lady Galadriel had watched him as he resurfaced, gasping.

 _There is much suffering beyond the borders of Doriath, Dior Eluch_ _íl._ Dior had blinked away tears, and Galadriel had passed a hand over his hair, a trace of sorrow on her eternally calm features. Dior stares into the fire, watching the sparks dance upwards.

“Do you regret any of it?” He asks after a long moment. Celegorm raises an eyebrow at him.

“What use is regret?” Celegorm asks. Dior reaches over and touches his wrist lightly, right over where he had bitten him. He’d set aside the gloves Celegorm had given him, and Celegorm’s skin is warm against his. The scar Dior’s teeth have left is silver against Celegorm’s skin.

“You haven’t answered me.” Dior says. Celegorm, with slow deliberation takes Dior’s hand. Inspecting his too-long fingers, the smooth, translucent scales covering the skin up to his forearms. Dior’s blush deepening when Celegorm pushes his sleeve up, his thumb pressing down on Dior’s quickly-beating pulse.

“I am what I am meant to be, despite everything both Oromë and Huan tried to curb.” Celegorm says. He lets Dior go. “How could there be room for regret in that?” Dior inhales. He presses his fingers on Celegorm’s scarred wrist again.

“It doesn’t mean you have to be the wolf forever.” He says softly. Celegorm studies him, half-perplexed, half-incredulous. Dior doesn’t look away from him. He keeps holding Celegorm’s hand.

“Lúthien has filled your head with too many sweet songs, _huinc_ _ë.”_ Celegorm says at last. He lifts his fingers, and his touch on Dior’s chin is light, careful. Dior feels the echo of it for the rest of the day, long after they’ve put out the fire and made their way onwards through the dark and the cold.

Rain pours, piercing through the canopy in a sudden cascade. Celegorm and Dior take shelter from the downpour beneath a rocky outcropping. Side by side, they watch the rain fall. Dior thinks of his friends’ corpses, wonders if Grandfather’s guards have found them, or whether the rain is washing their bones clean. He wonders if Grandmother has found him yet, whether Mother and Father are on their way. Celegorm’s wooden dove in his hands, and he wishes he had magic enough to bring it to life, to send it to Menegroth with his message. _I’m alive. I’m waiting for you. Come find me. I miss you._

Celegorm watches him. Dior wonders what he’s thinking. Before he can ask, the rain stops. Celegorm tugs the hood of the cloak up Dior’s head, careful to shield him from the fat drops of freezing water dripping from the evergreen branches. He takes care in guiding Rocco over the muddy, slippery ground, and then he pulls on Rocco’s reins abruptly, making Dior crash into him with a thump. Celegorm steadies him, hand on his hip and Dior gives him a questioning look. Celegorm is frowning.

“Wait,” Celegorm says. He raises an eyebrow at Dior. “I suggest you not try to ride away. Rocco will throw you off. Won’t you?” This he addresses to Rocco, patting the horse on the nose. Dior sticks his tongue out at him, a childish gesture but it makes Celegorm smile as he dismounts, and Dior watches as he heads for a bramble bush growing thickly a few feet away from the trail. 

Rocco whickers. Dior pats his head softly as Celegorm crouches down. His lips are moving, and as Dior watches he reaches forwards to pull a soft furred body out of the brambles.

Celegorm cradles it in his hands. It’s a hare, blinking and struggling weakly, its long ears twitching, its fur soaked from the rain. Dior sees that its hind leg is hanging down, the bone poking through the flesh. The flesh itself is oozing pus and crusted in blood. Celegorm is frowning.

“A fox did this.” He mutters. “It’s a wonder it managed to escape.” Dior dismounts. He glances at the hare. Healing would take magic, and Celegorm definitely knows some, but he’s been giving Dior his food and though outwardly he seems fine Dior knows it might be taking its toll on him. 

“I can heal it.” He says. “I know the song you use for that. _Eme_ taught me.” The hare kicks weakly, writhing in pain. Celegorm raises an eyebrow at him, skeptical.

“Make sure you know the words.” The hare struggles weakly. It calms when Celegorm murmurs something in Quenya to it, his thumb stroking between its eyes as Dior holds a hand over its wounded leg and starts to sing.

Warmth shivers down his palm. Bones easing back into place and knitting together, blood replenished, skin and fur restored. The hare’s ears twitch, bright eyes blinking. Celegorm stares at Dior.

“That.” He says. “Was _not_ what Huan taught me.” He scratches the hare’s head, and to Dior’s surprise it stays put in his arms. Dior shrugs, a little self-conscious.

“I made some of it up.” He says. The hare sniffs at Dior’s hand. Celegorm, in spite of himself, looks impressed. Dior strokes the top of the hare’s head, smiling, pride unfurling in his chest. He’d always been a good healer, when given the opportunity to do so. “It works on poisons, too.” The hare nudges her nose against Dior’s palm.

“She’s telling you thanks.” Celegorm says. Dior’s smile widens. Celegorm sets the hare down on the ground, and it bounds away. Celegorm isn’t watching her, though, but Dior. Dior lowers his head, a bit embarrassed without knowing why. Celegorm helps him back up on Rocco, sits behind him and takes the reins.

“Your mother taught you that, didn’t she? “ Celegorm asks. “Huan’s spell. That faithless thing abandoned me and my brother when we needed his aid the most.” Dior turns in his arms.

“He abandoned a master he loved, but no longer recognized.” Dior says quietly. Just a few weeks ago his impulse would have been to shrink back, but this time he doesn’t look away from Celegorm. The inflamed spots on his throat and the bruise on his face have healed, but he thinks he feels the shadow of pain throb against his skin. _He won’t hurt me._ Dior tells himself firmly.

Celegorm looks away. Dior doesn’t. Hesitantly, he reaches behind him, grabs Celegorm’s wrist.

“… I’m surprised you didn’t eat the rabbit.” Dior ventures. He doesn’t let go of Celegorm’s hand. Celegorm laughs. Dior wonders when he started to like hearing him laugh, how warm it made him feel.

“Would you have wanted to, after you had healed it?” He tugs on the reins with his free hand, and Rocco sets off. “Oromë wouldn’t have let my cousins and I within an inch of his forests if we had done nothing but slaughter the things living in it.” Rocco blinks his big black eyes when Celegorm reaches over to pat his head. Dior remembers Mother’s story. Oromë’s hunter stalked the woods as gracefully as any wolf did, and just as silently.

“There is more to a hunt than killing.” Celegorm continues. Dior picks at his clothes. They’re his own robes, worn over Celegorm’s too-lose spares. It’s already freezing, and it would steadily get colder. 

“Like catching things.” Dior says quietly. “Chasing them down and trapping them.” Celegorm does not answer. Dior gives his hand a squeeze. Celegorm holds still for a moment, like he’s thinking, then he gently pulls away from Dior’s grip, stopping Rocco and mounting the saddle. Dior leans against Celegorm’s chest, careful. Celegorm sighs against his hair, reaches over and laces their fingers together.

\---

They continue on their journey. Celegorm lets Dior walk. He lets Dior run. Dior makes a game of it, flitting away as fast as he can and racing up to the treetops. Celegorm always brings him back, catching him, grabbing his shoulder, Celegorm’s arm wrapping around his waist before he can get too far. He always keeps a firm grip on Dior throughout the rest of the day, and Dior does not squirm away. He leans back against Celegorm, tucks his head beneath Celegorm’s chin and closes his eyes.

His dreams, while in Celegorm’s arms, are undisturbed. Sometimes he wakes to find Celegorm’s already set up camp and has him tucked under blankets and furs. Other times, he opens his eyes to find himself still cradled against Celegorm’s chest, the forest quiet and dark all around them, Celegorm’s hair the only bright thing anywhere. One time, Dior lifts his hand up when he’s too drowsy to think better of it, catching a lock of hair and twining it around his gloved fingers, so like the filaments of a spiderweb. Dior plays with it for a while, braiding and unbraiding it, holding it up to the weak spots of sunlight and watching it shine. When Dior looks up his heart gives a sudden painful squeeze when he sees Celegorm’s smiling. A real one. Not mocking, or cruel, but amused and very soft, and Dior’s face heats up. He doesn’t realize he’s grinning back until Celegorm brushes his fingers against his cheek, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear.

When he goes to sleep that night, he drifts off to Celegorm’s fingers stroking his hair. He thinks he feels Celegorm brush a kiss against the side of his head, but he isn’t sure.

Dior dreams of red. He wakes screaming, and then feels himself being caught up in gentle arms. Shivering as Celegorm murmurs soft words in his ears, and he doesn’t stop shaking for a long time, not even when Celegorm keeps him tucked against him like a small bird he was trying to warm.

\---

Celegorm is silent again that day. Dior steals glances at him every now and then. The wooden birds are a slight weight in his pocket, and Dior can feel Celegorm watching him but he looks away whenever Dior tries to catch his gaze.

When he inevitably falls asleep on the saddle, he wakes to Celegorm holding him securely against his chest, as always. He’d stirred, and then drifted off again to the sound of a sweet melody sung in a rough voice. He’d woken up already by a campfire, a blanket tucked around his shoulders and Celegorm preparing their midday meal. More foraged roots and nuts. They were saving the rest of the waybread for the worst of winter, just in case they didn’t make it to Amon Ereb in time.

“What was that song?” he’d asked, yawning. The smell of the cooking soup makes his mouth water. Celegorm had glanced at him briefly as he ladled soup into a bowl.

“A lullaby from Eldamar, sung by mothers to their babes. I should have tried singing you to sleep when I first caught you. You’re much more cooperative asleep than awake.” Dior rubs at his eyes, ignoring the half-hearted barb. He accepts the bowl.

“You would be bored if I slept all the time and stopped talking to you.” He yawns again. The heron had been tucked in his robe’s pocket when he woke up, along with the crane. He’s fairly certain he had felt Celegorm gently pluck it from his fingers before he fell asleep completely. Celegorm’s face cracks open in a grin. Something bright and relieved bubbles up in Dior’s chest at the sight.

“Teach it to me.” Dior says, warming his fingers around the bowl as he sips the soup. Celegorm gives him an incredulous stare.

“Do you even understand Quenya? Your grandfather had banned the use of it shortly after our arrival.” _After the Kinslaying at Alqualond_ _ë._ Dior nods.

“I know some.” Dior edges closer. “Ada taught me.” He’s close enough to feel Celegorm’s heat, and Dior can see the odd shadow from last night still clouding his features. It’s an odd impulse, but he doesn’t want that shadow there. Wants to drive it away, like his mother had cleansed the Isle of Werewolves. And he’s not certain it’ll work, but Celegorm has a strange look on his face. “Please? You don’t have to let me sing, I just want to know the words.”

It takes a while for Dior to identify it as relief. Celegorm glances away, but Dior doesn’t move from his spot beside him as he begins to teach him the words.

The days grow even colder. Celegorm teaches him the lullaby he’d been singing. He teaches him other words, too. And songs, though Celegorm still doesn’t allow Dior to sing, covering his mouth when he tries and snickering at the face Dior makes behind it. Speaking to him in Quenya and waiting patiently as Dior figures out what he means, answers. Laughing at him whenever he mangles the pronunciation of a word, but Dior doesn’t mind. When Dior speaks to Celegorm, whenever he gets him to smile, to laugh, sometimes it feels like he’s chasing a shadow away, one that was barely tangible and only noticeable upon its absence.

Dior tells himself it’s mostly for him to get Celegorm’s guard down, enough for Dior to find a means of escape, and not for the sharp catch in Celegorm’s breath, the intense _longing_ flashing through his eyes whenever he looks at Dior. He has to remind himself not to want to see them for their own sake.

(He does, anyway.)

The snows start. Celegorm ensures Dior is so wrapped in warm cloth and furs that he can barely breathe. He slips them off when he goes dancing along the treetops. Celegorm always follows him, keeping an eye on him as he climbs up and flits through the forest cover, Dior making it a point to alight on the most slender branches growing near the tops. Their slight weight holding under his own as he pokes his head above the sea of trees, trying to figure out where they are.

“Careful, _Laerlilin_.” Celegorm calls out. Dior looks down. He has no doubt about how easily Celegorm would catch up to him if he tried to run. He tries, anyway, weaving and ducking along the branches, twigs stinging his cheeks as he darts around tree trunks and attempts to lose the loping, steady gait just a little ways behind him.

He doesn’t get far; Celegorm catches him around the waist again, and Dior does not struggle as Celegorm practically scoops him up into his arms, bears him back to where Rocco is standing. Dior winds his arms around his shoulders, and Celegorm stiffens.

“Are you going to tie me up?” Dior asks, his heart still pounding in his chest, his face damp and hot from exertion. Celegorm’s dark eyes are sharp with desire, his silver hair brushes against Dior’s cheek, and Dior wants to tug at it, so he does. His fingers playfully catching and pulling at the silver strands as he waits for Celegorm to answer his question. Celegorm’s gaze flickers to his pulse, and Dior’s cheeks redden further.

“No.” Celegorm says briefly. He reaches up, and Dior holds himself very still as Celegorm drags his fingers against the back of his neck. Scratching lightly at the delicate skin beneath the feathers and Dior _melts._ His eyes going half-lidded and his limbs loosening and going warm and heavy of their own accord as Celegorm continues his petting. He can feel Celegorm’s chuckle going through him.

“I hope this means I’ve tamed you, you wild little thing.” Dior leans against Celegorm’s chest, he hears Celegorm sigh as he gathers him close.

 _No, I’ve tamed you._ Dior thinks but does not say. He burrows closer into Celegorm’s warmth, and Celegorm holds him tighter.

\----

They stop by a cave. After weeks of sleeping on the forest floor, Dior’s grateful for the stony roof above their heads. Celegorm is relieved, too.

“We’ll actually be sheltered from the wind tonight.” He mutters. And Dior fights down the sudden lump in his throat. The colder days had left him shivering, even with his layer of feathers. Celegorm and Dior had taken to constructing a lean-to whenever the winds got to be too much, and they had been careful to change their clothes and dry their used ones by the fire overnight to keep them dry. As Celegorm draped his blanket over Dior’s shoulders, Dior had bitten his lip and lifted the edge of the blanket, beckoning Celegorm closer.

“Come here.” Dior had said, his face flaming. Celegorm stared at him.

“It’s going to be warmer if it’s the two of us.” Dior had said, his pulse hammering. And it’s ridiculous since they’ve been holding onto each other, touching each other for weeks, but somehow this feels different. “I know you’re cold. Come here.” After a moment of obvious, painful indecision, Celegorm had obeyed, his throat working. Allowing Dior to drape the blankets over them both, and Celegorm had promptly curled up around him. Tucking his face against his neck and nuzzling at his feathered nape, and Dior’s breath had gone soft and sharp. Celegorm’s lips brushing against his pulse, and he’d melted. Pure comfort washing over him and his eyelids had fallen shut to the sensation of Celegorm’s hot breath against his neck and ear.

He’d woken up hard, still in Celegorm’s arms. Want burning through him and he blushes crimson when Celegorm’s eyes met his, meeting the focused intensity of his gaze with his own. Celegorm had stroked his cheek, then down to the back of his neck. Dior growing warm, warm all over and before he knew it, Celegorm had pushed him flat on his back and Dior’s breath had stuttered to a stop and his heart had gone still in his chest as sudden terror sweeps through him.

Though he tries to hide it, Celegorm misses nothing. The smile on his face fades. He pushes himself up, and Dior is free. Folding his legs together and curling up into a ball and breathing hard as he returns to himself.

They don’t speak for the rest of the day. Celegorm avoids Dior’s gaze, and he doesn’t sit behind him on the saddle, walking beside him and Rocco. After several hours Dior can’t bear it anymore and touches his hand. Celegorm had looked up, then. At Dior’s questioning expression he’d tucked his hair behind his ear and shaken his head.

They tie Rocco near the entrance – the cave is too small for a horse and two people to fit in - and Celegorm murmurs something soft to the horse as Rocco whickers in complaint. Dior starts to work on building a small fire some ways away from the entrance, holding his hands out to the toasty warmth. Celegorm enters the cave, tosses a soft bundle at him. Clean clothes, the spare set Celegorm had been lending him.

“It’ll freeze soon.” He mutters. “I expected us to be at Amon Ereb by this time.” He turns away from Dior. “Change your clothes. If you let the sweat dry on you, you’ll freeze.” Dior obeys. Despite Celegorm forcing himself not to look, he can feel Celegorm’s attention lingering on his body as Dior lays out his crimson robe as close as he can to the fire without singeing it, then puts Celegorm’s clothes on. When he’s done, he feels a warm weight drape around his shoulders and clutches at the blanket at his neck, giving Celegorm a grateful look. Celegorm holds his gaze, and at the sight of his barely-restrained want, Dior feels heat crawl up his throat and neck, and down. Remembering how Celegorm had pinned him to the ground. How he’d stopped himself from taking Dior when he saw he was scared.

His scars are living shadows on his torso and arms. Dior swallows, clutching at the folds of the cloak, tucks his knees to his chest, wondering who would give in first. Celegorm does. Forcibly turning away from him before reaching down and tossing Dior a accepts the crabapple Celegorm fishes out from the saddlebag.

He doesn’t miss the seeming crease of worry on Celegorm’s forehead that was now the normal thing while assessing how meagre their supplies have gotten. Warmth, unbidden, blossoms in his chest.

“Eat two, you’ve lost so much weight.” Celegorm says, tossing Dior another crabapple. “We’ll need to forage tomorrow. Hopefully the squirrels haven’t beaten us to what’s left.” Dior bites into the fruit, Dior doesn’t miss the glance Celegorm gives him as he eats, the open hunger there.

Dior nibbles the apple down to the core, licks his lips and fingers clean of the juice, trying to ignore how hard his heart is hammering. He looks up to meet Celegorm’s eyes, drops the core to the ground, his fingers twisting in Celegorm’s cloak. Celegorm glances away, but not before Dior sees warring with lust on his face, shame.

“Go to sleep, _huinc_ _ë.”_ Celegorm says gently. He doesn’t look at him. Dior swallows down his disappointment, inhales, and pulls the cloak and blankets over himself. Celegorm does not come closer, and the world fades around him as he falls asleep.

Dior dreams.

He dreams of hungry forests and gleaming eyes. He’s wearing his red robes and veiled hat, and the smell of blood rises from their folds. He’s lost, and in this forest there are no stars in the sky.

He looks behind him, just a path, endless and stained red. Same as what lay before him. Dior knows if he stays here, if he keeps wearing the hat, he will be found. And so he remains, while the leaves rustle around him and shadows gather, stretch, open their eyes. 

The dream shifts. Dior is naked now. Not even a hat to cover him, but queerly enough he’s not afraid. Before him is a great white beast, its fur matted with blood. Dior’s arms are covered with gore up the elbow. He is hacking steadily at the beast’s chest with a hunting knife, and the beast patiently waits for him to finish whatever it is he’s doing. Dior reaches in the gory hole he’d made, scoops out what he’s looking for. The beast’s massive heart, veined in black and pulsating.

“It’s rotten meat.” Celegorm’s voice rumbles from the beast’s throat, and the beast has turned to Celegorm, kneeling before him. Just as naked as Dior, and on his chest a bloody, gaping hole. His eyes are starving, desperate as he watches Dior’s face. “Are you sure you want it?” Dior cups the heart between his hands, lays a kiss on it, and starts to eat.

Dior wakes with a cry, jerking up and gasping for breath. But this time there no steady hands grasping his shoulders. No quiet murmur easing him awake. Dior shivers, turning towards Celegorm, and then his eyes widen in surprise. Because Celegorm is lying on his side, his head pillowed on his arm. His expression peaceful. His eyes are closed. He’s asleep.

Dior takes a deep breath, then another. Celegorm doesn’t stir. Dior gets up onslightly unsteady legs, but Celegorm doesn’t move, doesn’t so much as stir.

He was really asleep. Dior lets out a long, slow exhale. Suddenly seeing his situation in horrible clarity. They might be far from Amon Ereb, but they’ll get there eventually. And no matter how gentle Celegorm is with him, Dior will become the political hostage of one of Doriath’s greatest enemies. There will be war, if he allows himself to be taken. He knows his Grandfather well enough, even if he’ll give up the silmaril in exchange for him, he wouldn’t let this slight pass. And even shattered as they had been by the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Fëanorian forces remain a menacing force that the Iathrim kept their spears and swords sharpened against.

This is, Dior knows, his one true chance of escape.

He’s taking it.

Dior keeps breathing normally. He’s fairly certain Celegorm would notice the shift in his breathing if he stopped, and he moves as quietly as possible as he slips his robe on, takes his cloak, pulls on his boots. But Celegorm doesn’t move. Sound asleep. Dior spares a second to wonder how long Celegorm had gone without, while guarding his prisoner.

(He does not think about the warmth at his back. The songs. Celegorm giving him his food and going without, day in and day out. The gentle touch at the back of his neck.)

Celegorm looks so peaceful. So young. Dior leans down, unable to stop himself. Very lightly, Dior brushes his lips across Celegorm’s cheek, feather-light and tender. Celegorm sighs but does not stir, and Dior pulls away as fast as possible, his heart pounding and his eyes stinging. Swallowing the painful lump in his throat as he turns away. He darts out of the cave, neatly side-stepping the smouldering fire, and then he’s rushing into the cover of the trees as fast as he can.

It’s freezing. He hadn’t taken Celegorm’s fur cloak, it would have only weighed him down, and the cold pierces through his too-thin clothes and his feathers. He doesn’t stop running, and far too soon his ears pick up on the sounds of pursuit. His heart in his throat, he runs faster. Finds a tree with brainches low enough to climb onto and he scampers up it like a frightened, frantic squirrel evading a fox. Twigs and thorns biting into his skin, and he steps on something that gives way beneath his foot but he uses his momentum to keep going. Hopping from one tree branch to another on light feet, No idea where to run to except _away,_ not even knowing the direction he’s going in.

His eyes burn. His lungs ache. He runs, faster than he’s ever run in his life, putting in a burst of speed when he feels like slowing down. For a while, Dior thinks he’s lost him. And then he hears the wolf loping along behind him. A distant but persistent shadow. Celegorm will keep following him at his own pace, Dior knows, until his legs gave out from exhaustion. He’s chased Dior down enough to know precisely how to corner him. But Dior refuses to stop, to give in, to give up. And then the tree cover gives out and Dior nearly crashes to the forest floor. Nothing else before him but a sheer rock face, too steep and slippery to climb. Dior realizes too late that Celegorm had crowded him in this direction for that very purpose.

 _No._ Dior looks around wildly, but Celegorm is behind him now. Crouching on a sturdy branch. He’s breathing hard but looks nowhere near exhausted. Dior knows Celegorm can follow him a thousand leagues more before he gets tired, will find him no matter which direction he runs into this forest.

“ _Laerlilin.”_ Celegorm says. His voice is gentle. “There’s nowhere to run here. You’ll starve to death if you get lost by yourself.” Dior shakes his head, wiping at his cheeks like a child. The cuts on his face sting from his sweat, but to his horror he realizes it’s not the only thing trickling down his face, as he blinks and blinks but the tears don’t stop. Celegorm takes a step forward, and Dior grips onto his branch, shaking his head. Glaring at Celegorm like he’s daring him to tear him free. Celegorm looks bewildered and hurt, like he’s at a total loss with how to deal with Dior and his tears, as Dior’s shoulders shudder and he wipes and wipes at his eyes to no avail.

“ _Laerlilin.”_ Celegorm says, quiet like he’s gentling an animal caught in a trap. A trap he had placed him in, and Dior wonders if he does this to all the things he hunted, feels sick. “Come on. You’re bleeding and I’m worried you’ll slip off.” The bark digs into Dior’s palms, sharp. Breathing hurts.

“I want to go home.” He whispers. Hating himself for how small his voice sounds, in that empty dark. “Please. Let me go home.” Celegorm’s fingers close around his wrist. His voice is still hushed, tender.

“Come with me, _huinya._ ” Dior urges his legs to run, but his body refuses to obey him. Obeying Celegorm instead as Celegorm eases his hands away from the branch and pulls him forwards against his chest, into his arms. Scooping him up like a doll because his legs are too tired to move, and Dior curls up against him. Celegorm’s hands are gentle all throughout. Dior’s tears keep falling down his face like rain, soaking the collar of Celegorm's shirt where he rests his cheek, the salt stinging painfully against his cuts.

“It’s all right. Hush. It’s all right. Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.” Celegorm murmurs. "I won't hurt you." He keeps a firm grip on Dior with one arm before he climbs down the tree, landing catlike on the ground. Dior doesn’t struggle, doesn’t thrash, or try to shove him off-balance. He’s Beren and Lúthien’s son and he’s utterly _useless_ as Celegorm shifts his weight in his arms. Stares in naked dismay at his face, dripping blood on his white shirt. Celegorm sets him down, removing his cloak and draping it on Dior’s shoulders. Reaching for a small pack slung across his shoulder, the bitter smell of medicinal herbs stinging his nose.

“I just want to go home.” Dior whispers again. Celegorm looks at him, then gently pulls him closer. He doesn’t answer, stroking the back of Dior's neck in a gesture of futile comfort, and Dior buries his face against Celegorm’s the curve of Celegorm's throat, pressing against his warmth, Dior's shoulders trembling as he sobs. 


	7. Chapter 7

Celegorm carries him back to the camp like a small child. Dior is too tired to protest. His eyes closing without him noticing and he drifts off, wakes to find the world dark and himself still in Celegorm’s arms. He stirs, and Celegorm looks at him. Dior can barely make out the gleam of his eyes. The tips of his nose and ears are freezing. 

“Go back to sleep.” Celegorm says. “We have a long way to go.” Dior shifts. Celegorm holds him tighter. Protective as much as possessive. He doesn’t try to pull away further. The cuts on his face throb in pain. Celegorm having washed it in water from their waterskin before putting a poultice on the cuts and wrapping them in bandages. Dior had been too exhausted and wrung out from crying to stop him, or push him away so he can heal himself. He’s certain Celegorm hasn’t forgotten about that last fact, anyway.

“Are we lost?” Dior asks. His voice is too loud in the forest night. His breath rises up as steam.

“No, but I doubt we’ll reach Amon Ereb before the snows start.” Celegorm says. His tone doesn’t carry with it the heat that Dior remembers. “It will be more familiar by daylight, but for the moment, make my life easier and try not to run away. You’re hurt and the smell of your blood might draw untoward animals to you.”

“Like you.” Dior says wearily, and he regrets it immediately, knowing how cruel it sounds. Celegorm adjusts his grip so that the cloak covers Dior fully, like an infant swaddled in a blanket. Just as warm and just as trapped.

“Yes. Like me, but with more regard to seeing you dead and torn to toothsome shreds rather than warm and safe.” His voice remains gentle throughout. “Go back to sleep, _huinya_. You need rest.” Dior’s cheeks are still sticky with tears.

“… _Huinya?”_ He mumbles. Celegorm just kisses the top of his head, and the soft gesture echoes through him, making the tightness in his chest ease.

“My little pup.” Celegorm murmurs. Dior buries his face against the column of Celegorm’s throat, and a deeper darkness overtakes him as Celegorm strokes gently at the back of his neck with his hand.

He wakes to find himself in a rare patch of sunlight, his head on Celegorm’s lap, the remains of a fire smouldering before them. His robe drying near the fire and the fur cloak tucked tight around him. Celegorm has his back braced against a tree stump, and his eyes are closed, his head hanging down. His breathing is deep and even. He still has his hand cupped around the back of Dior’s neck.

He stirs when Dior pushes himself up. His legs cramp, and he winces as he moves to sit up. Celegorm lifts his hand, and Dior stiffens. He searches for anger in Celegorm’’s gaze, finds none.

“… You know I will not – cannot- hurt you.” Celegorm says. There’s shame in his gaze, but for once he doesn’t look away from Dior. Letting Dior see. “Not anymore.” But Dior doesn’t relax, not until Celegorm lowers his hand.

 _It’s rotten meat. Are you sure you want it?_ He banishes the dream from his mind. Celegorm takes his hand. Cradles it in his.

“I’m fairly certain that you can trust me, of all people, to make an oath and keep it.” His hand is warm. Celegorm leans down, and Dior’s breath catches in his throat as he grazes his lips over his fingers. “I will not hurt you, or beat you, or starve you. No matter what happens from this point on.” Dior is silent.

“You _are_ still hurting me.” Dior whispers. “You won’t let me go home, because of a stupid jewel. You’ll keep being the wolf instead of the hunter because of your stupid oath.” His voice cracks.

“I’m sorry.” Celegorm says. Dior’s eyes blur. When Celegorm pulls him into his arms, he doesn’t resist. Crying into his chest as Celegorm cradles him close.

\---

They reach the cave. Rocco has been let loose and whickers in greeting when he sees them. Celegorm pats his nose as they enter the cold cave, Dior’s hand tucked secure in his. After he gets the fire going and strips his sweat-stained shirt off, he tugs Dior down against him, covers them both in the blankets and cloak. His arm heavy around his waist as he holds Dior securely against him.

“Don’t try to run.” He murmurs. He’s out like a light within seconds. Dior watches his breathing deepen, too tired to do anything but watch him, and after a moment he sighs as he buries his face against Celegorm's chest, his eyelids drooping and closing of their own volition. 

His dreams are little more than flickers of white fur and softness beneath his cheek. A hungry beast licking blood from his fingers. Dior wakes to fingers drifting through his hair. In that blissful moment between dreams, he thinks he’s back in Tol Galen, and Mother is waking him up for breakfast, and then he remembers where he is and has to swallow down a sigh. Celegorm’s fingers caressing the tips of his ears, and down his neck and back, quiet fire burning where he touches him. Dior opens his eyes. Celegorm’s touch stills, but Dior doesn’t move away.

“We should head out now.” Celegorm says. His voice is barely audible. He pushes himself up, the furs pooling around his waist. His scars in stark relief against his skin. Dior follows him with his eyes as they get dressed. Celegorm keeps his arms wrapped around him as they wind through the forest trails. Dior lets him, leaning heavily against him, his cheek pressed against Celegorm’s beating pulse. 

Celegorm picks through the dense trees and finds a stream. He guides Rocco to the length of it, upstream, but not before refilling their waterskin. Dior following him to the streambank and sitting down in a patch of sunlight. And then he notices it. A small plant, still growing despite the winter frost, its stem green and its sharp-edged leaves shrivelled brown, half-hidden behind the bushes already stripped of their foliage.

A childhood memory stirs in him. His mother and father, holding his hands while in Tol Galen. His father pointing out a small plant growing near the stream.

 _“Elfsbane. The Nandorim use these to coat their arrows.”_ He says. _“Never eat this, Dior. It poisons even the Eldar.”_

Dior’s heart is pounding, but Celegorm doesn’t seem to notice as hands him the waterskin. His expression contemplative as he turns away to fetch something by the saddlebags. Dior stares at the plant as he sips at the water.

 _Every part is lethal._ His father’s voice, full of warning, in his ears. _Boil the whole plant – roots and all -in a pot of water to coat the tips of a dozen arrows. The juice from a handful of crushed leaves can kill an elf, even diluted in wine. Just one leaf can finish off a man._ But Dior doesn’t need a handful. He just needs enough to keep Celegorm from following him as he ran.

 _Your only chance left._ Dior cannot allow Celegorm to take him to Amon Ereb. He can’t. No matter how much his guts rebel and his heart twists at the thought of causing him pain.

 _Others must suffer so that your own kingdom may be saved._ Grandfather’s words echo through him like he’s a hollow bell. Quick as a trice, without letting himself think, Dior plucks two leaves from the plant. His fingers tremble as he crushes the leaves between his thumb and forefinger. Disguising the sound by his gulping, though he’s not certain how he manages it around the lump in his throat. The water is brackish and bitter – _it’ll disguise the flavor, Father said it was bitter -_ but he barely tastes it. Slipping the crushed leaves in as he screws the lid on, his fingers so stiff that he almost doesn’t manage to drop it in.

“ _Laerlilin_.” Dior somehow doesn’t jump. He breathes out, doesn’t budge from his patch of light. Celegorm’s hand is heavy on his shoulder. “It’s time to go.” Dior stands up, disguising his nervousness as reluctance. Celegorm helps him up his saddle, touches his face lightly. Dior lifts his eyes up, Celgorm looks away, takes the waterskin from him.

Dior hears the slosh-slosh of the water inside it louder than Rocco’s footfalls in the forest. Mercifully Celegorm doesn’t take the quiet against him.

“Where were you even planning to go?” Celegorm asks. Dior shrugs.

“Away.” He manages to answer. “Just away.”

Celegorm looks at him for a long moment. Dior doesn’t try to say anything else. His heart jumping to his throat when Celegorm takes the waterskin and the saddlebag of nuts and berries. Handing the bag to Dior and Dior’s fingers shake as he crams a berry into his mouth, taking care not to use the one which handled the plant.

Celegorm opens the waterskin, and lifts it to his lips. Dior just barely stops himself from closing his fingers around Celegorm’s wrist to wrench it free. Celegorm winces as he wipes his mouth. 

“Disgusting.” He mutters. Then he catches sight of Dior’s white face. His lips, pressed together, shaking.

“I’m sorry.” Dior whispers. Celegorm’s eyes widen.

“What did you-“ The betrayal in Celegorm’s eyes slides past his ribs sharper than any knife. Dior leaps off of Rocco before Celegorm’s hands make a grab for him. Darting between tree trunks, and he hears Celegorm crashing after him, then an awful stillness that tells him the poison was taking effect.

His legs fall still. He’s breathing hard. His mind screaming at him to _run, run now before he catches you again –_ but his legs don’t obey him. And neither do his memories. Celegorm, ensuring he got more to eat. Keeping him warm and safe from the cold. Teasing him. Telling him stories. Singing to him. Carrying him. Wiping away his tears and holding him after his nightmares. Making him his own oath.

And even though Dior knows he’s fully Celegorm’s prisoner, had done the same to his mother and could have killed his father, he can’t force his legs to move. Grandfather’s words fading to an echo because Dior _can’t he just can’t-_

He can’t leave him.

Dior lets out a sob, turns back. Celegorm is on the ground, just a few feet away from Rocco. His body twitching, foam dribbling from his lips. His breathing is shallow and labored, and getting fainter by the second. _He hasn’t been eating._ Dior’s thoughts are frantic as he places Celegorm’s head in his lap. _Dior, you idiot. He’s starving and he’s tired. Of course the poison’s effects will be worse-._ And then Celegorm vomits, choking on his own bile that was all the contents of his stomach, and Dior’s heart goes still in his chest.

“No,” He whispers, tipping Celegorm’s head to the side so his vomit and spittle don’t choke him. “ _No_ , come back.” Celegorm’s eyes remain closed, but Dior can feel his heartbeat, weakening beneath his palm. Dior starts to sing, his voice unsteady and reed-thin as Celegorm shudders and heaves, vomiting poison and bile onto the ground.

\--

Fat, fluffy flakes are drifting down the forest canopy to the ground by the time Celegorm wakes. Dior watches him stir, his knees tucked to his chest. Celegorm blinks at him, his turn to be confused as he realizes they’re back in the cave, before the events of two days ago trickle back into his consciousness. Those two days, he had spent vomiting and sweating, while running a high fever. Dior tending to him and easing the poison out of him with his magic, wiping at his fevered brow with the torn hem of his robe, keeping the fire running and Rocco fed, keeping Celegorm warm as he held him until the poison worked itself out of Celegorm’s body.

“I’m sorry.” Dior says. He’s a safe distance away from him, but he still stiffens when Celegorm sits halfway up, leaning heavily on his elbows. Celegorm’s eyes are narrowed into slits. There's no soft affection, or amusement on his face at all. He looks like a wolf about to rip out the throat of the prey it had backed into a corner, and Dior tenses. Preparing himself to run. 

“I didn’t think you had it in you, _Laerlilin.”_ He hisses. “You’re so soft and weak that I didn’t expect you had anything of your mother in you except for your mouth and your looks. I was wrong.” Dior swallows down the hurt he feels at Celegorm’s words.

“I’m sorry.” He says again. Celegorm pushes himself up, bracing himself at the rush of blood from lying down too long, and Dior flinches, his pulse pounding at the thought of the incoming pain, but some shred of his pride refuses to have him back down. Celegorm stops. His gaze flickering like a banked fire. He chuckles softly.

“Why didn’t you leave me for dead?” He asks. His voice is hard. “I expect that was your plan? Why didn’t you leave me and run home to your mother?” Dior bites his lip.

“I couldn’t.” Dior says. His voice is very small. Celegorm stares at him.

“Why?” His voice is cold. No gentleness in it at all. Dior bites his lip hard enough that he tastes blood.

“I don’t want you dead.” He whispers. Celegorm stares at him. And then he starts to laugh, an awful, harsh barking sound that has Dior tensing further, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, his heart jumping to his throat as Celegorm gets to his feet, hand braced against the wall as he makes his way over to him. Grabbing Dior and hauling him up, fingers nearly bruising-tight around his jaw.

“Why?” Celegorm punctuates it with a shake. Dior does not break his gaze, biting his lips down on the _you're hurting me_ threatening to bubble up. “Were you afraid of getting your hands dirty? Did the thought of killing your enemy turn your weak stomach?” Dior’s eyes are stinging, but his voice is sharp and defiant as he answers.

“I said I don’t want you dead.” He says. 

“And why not?” Celegorm’s voice is cold, but unable to fully mask his confusion. Dior doesn’t look away. He forces his limbs not to shake, but he’s unable to swallow down his gasp as Celegorm tightens his grip. Celegorm freezes, then loosens it. Dior swallows, barely able to see past the sheen misting over his eyes.

“I just. Don’t.” Dior whispers. “I don’t want you dead. I’m _sorry.”_ Celegorm stares at him. His face twists.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Celegorm snarls, and Dior flinches as he shakes Dior like he would an errant pup. Furious. Utterly, absolutely betrayed. But his nails don’t dig into Dior’s skin and his grip doesn’t bruise. His words, however, sting like the lash of a whip.

“You don’t even know how to _kill_ properly, so-called Dior _Eluch_ _íl_. You’ll lead Doriath to its doom with how weak your father’s blood has left you. I almost feel sorry for Thingol. He deserves a better heir from his daughter before she goes beyond the Doors of Death. Instead he got _you_.“ Dior flinches with every word. His eyes burning, welling up with hurt and he doesn’t notice when he begins crying in earnest. Only that Celegorm’s grip on his jaw loosens.

“I don’t want you to kill you!” He says. It’s almost a shout, but the sob breaks at the back of his throat. His voice is very small. Celegorm is silent. A stricken expression on his face as Dior gives up on not breaking.

“I just meant to knock you out.” Dior’s blurts out. His shoulders shaking and the words spilling out of him as Celegorm’s anger consumes his face like a piece of parchment held against the flame. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you, I just want to go _home._ ”

“ _Why?”_ Celegorm’s voice is full of frustration, now. _“Why_ don’t you want me dead, if you had killed me you could have been making your way home now. _Look at me, Dior.”_ Celegorm shakes him again, his thumbs brushing under Dior’s eyes, wiping away his tears and Dior’s not certain what Celegorm’s trying to shake into him. Sense, probably.

“I just _don’t_ _!_ ” Dior yells. “I couldn’t. Leave. You. _What more do you want me to say?”_ He snaps his mouth shut, tasting salt on his lips, his fists clenched in Celegorm’s shirt as sobs wrack his frame. He waits, holding himself stiff, expecting pain. It doesn’t come.

After a long silence, Celegorm speaks.

“Look at me, Dior.” His voice is quiet. Dior refuses to obey, and Celegorm exhales, his breath barely more than a rasp in his throat. His thumbs brush away the tears from his cheeks, his grip no longer harsh, gentle again but firm as he tilts Dior’s face up. Rage, frustration, betrayal and overwhelming guilt and shame, warring on Celegorm''s features as he gazes into Dior's eyes for a short eternity. 

“I’m sorry.” Dior whispers again. Celegorm shakes his head, the sharp movement a counterpoint to how carefully he’s touching Dior.

“No.” Celegorm says. His voice is rough as he smoothes Dior’s hair away from his forehead. “ _I’m_ sorry you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. Your innocence will cost you, someday.” Dior is silent, tears running down his cheeks. The anger still burns in Celegorm’s eyes as he pulls Dior into his arms and crushes him against his chest. He reeks of stale sweat and vomit, but he’s _alive_ and Dior presses his cheek against his heartbeat, his trembling fingers catching on the cloth of his doublet as Celegorm cradles the back of his neck with one hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it's safe to assume Celegorm's thoroughly whipped at this point. :D Comments are appreciated. :D


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind the change in rating, guys.

The flurries turn to howling winds, but at least there’s is no dearth of firewood or water. Dior uses the soup pot to melt snow for Celegorm to wash his face and rinse his mouth, and brings him a change of clothes. Celegorm wrinkling his nose in disgust at his stained doublet, before folding it and stuffing it into a ball. Dior hadn’t understood how relieved he would be to see the Star of Fëanor gone until it is, as Celegorm pulls on his unmarked tunic and raises an eyebrow at him. 

Dior flushes, gives him his waybread, and the last of the foraged berries and nuts in a bowl. 

“There’s enough waybread for a week if we share it.” He says, hesitant. Celegorm snorts. He’s leaning heavily against the wall, his arm propped up on one knee, the already sharp angles of his face even more sunken now than before. Guilt twists in Dior’s stomach like a knife. His cheeks are still tacky from dried tears. Celegorm had held him until he’d emptied himself out after what felt like hours of sobbing. His throat still aches from crying so much. Celegorm had held him until his last hiccupping breath had subsided, mopping his face with the edge of his sleeve like he was a child.

“I don’t want it. For all I know you might take the chance to do the job right.” His smirk fades at the stricken expression on Dior’s face. “You need it more.” He says, and Dior bites his lip.

“I almost killed you.” He says. “You need to get your strength back.”

“And you’ll starve to death if you don’t eat, unlike me.” Celegorm says bluntly. “You wouldn’t be having this problem if you’d done the job properly and finished me off, _huinya_.” Dior looks up abruptly at the use of the pet name. _My little pup._ His face warms at the same time relief swoops down his belly.

“I told you I don’t want you to die.” Dior says, exasperated, his face heating further at the small smile on Celegorm’s face. “Do you?” And there’s that shadow again. Scything through Celegorm’s expression. Dior glares at it more than at Celegorm himself, his fingers tight around the bowl, stubbornly holding out the bowl to Celegorm. Celegorm’s eyes flick from the bowl to him.

“You should have been born in Valinor.” Celegorm says after a long moment. “Not here. Mandos should never have let your parents return to this world. But the Valar prefer to reward those who never deserved it and to shut their ears to the rest.” Dior knows he’s talking about Morgoth. He doesn’t answer, just holds out the bowl. After a moment, Celegorm takes it.

Celegorm eats half the waybread, pushing the bowl with the remaining half to Dior and raising an eyebrow at the look on Dior’s face. In exasperation, Dior takes it. He doesn’t miss the triumph in Celegorm’s eyes, or the softness there. But when Dior only eats half of the remaining waybread and pointedly pushes the rest towards Celegorm, Celegorm takes it with a quiet chuckle.

“Drink some water.” Celegorm says. “Your voice is raspy from crying.” Dior obeys, and Celegorm dries the edge of his mouth with his sleeve, after. The pad of his thumb pressing lightly against Dior’s lower lip, calloused and rough but warm, lingering there. Celegorm’s eyes dark as ink when Dior lifts his gaze to his, and doesn’t push him away.

They don’t speak for the rest of the day. Celegorm’s too wrung-out, and Dior’s exhausted. But Celegorm watches Dior openly, and Dior doesn’t turn away from him, from time to time catching himself brushing the tips of his fingers against his mouth. When Celegorm lies back down, Dior approaches him, hesitant. Celegorm looks up at him. Dior bites his lip.

“… Come here, _huinya._ ” Celegorm says, his voice rough. “It’s cold.” He holds out his arms, and Dior blinks back the fresh sting in his eyes as he drops down, and immediately tucks himself against Celegorm’s side. Celegorm grunting and wrapping his arms tight around him, drawing the blankets and cloak around their shoulders as Dior curls up against him, his head on his chest, listening to his beating heart as he drifts off.

When Dior wakes the next day, it’s to Celegorm’s fingers drifting through his hair, sinking into the feathers at the back of his neck. Dior shivers, his eyes flickering upwards to Celegorm’s. Celegorm leans down, giving him ample time to pull away. He brushes his lips against Dior’s forehead, and Dior sighs. Curling closer as Celegorm continues dropping kisses against his forehead and temple. 

_It’s rotten meat. Are you sure you want it_? Celegorm’s fingers toy with the feathers on Dior’s nape. He lays his head on Celegorm’s chest, closing his eyes to the soothing beat of his heart.

“I’m sorry.” He whispers again. Celegorm’s hands go still, then resume their stroking.

“You don’t need my forgiveness.” He says. His voice is a deep rumble against Dior’s ear. “I took you first. Away from your friends, your home. I shouldn’t have said those things to you, either.” _Weak. Useless._ Dior is quiet.

“You know, your mother saved my brother’s life.” Celegorm says. Dior shifts to look up at him. “Your father almost strangled Curvo to death. Your mother stopped him.” Dior reaches up to play with a sweat-stiff curl of Celegorm’s hair.

“I know.” He says. Curufin had shot at Mother and hit Father, right after. Celegorm takes his hand, kisses it.

“I thought it was stupid of her.” Celegorm says against Dior’s fingers. “I was angry. I was grateful.” Dior touches his fingers to Celegorm’s lips, smiling slightly as Celegorm nips at them with sharp teeth.

“It was also stupid of you to save me.” Celegorm says. His voice is quiet. “After everything I’ve done to you.”

“I couldn’t let you die.” Dior whispers. Celegorm tilts his face up.

“I am the wolf in your story, _huinya._ ” Celegorm says, serious and gentle. “And don’t make the mistake of thinking I was ever the hunter first. Why do you think Oromë gave me Huan in the first place?” Dior reaches up, twines his fingers in Celegorm’s hair. 

“I don’t want you dying as the wolf.” Dior whispers. “I _can’t._ I want you alive. I want you happy. I don’t want you eaten up by your Oath. You deserve better. All of you do.” He thinks of Amrod, frightened and alone as the flames ate him whole. Celegorm looks like he wants to say something, then thinks better of it.

“Your parents and your grandparents wish otherwise.” Is all he says. “And they would be right. You are far too innocent, _Laerlilin._ Elu Thingol should have taught you better. This whole misadventure of yours” He gestures at the two of them “Should have proven to you that your parents have sheltered you too much. For the sake of your kingdom, you should learn to harden that gentle heart of yours.” His tone would be chiding if it weren’t so quiet and riddled with guilt. “Your parents cannot protect you forever. My brothers and I learned that the hard way.” Dior lifts his head up.

“I know. It frightens me.” He says softly. In the half-dark, he can see Celegorm lift his hand to tuck his hair behind his ear, trace his cheekbone. Little gestures of quiet comfort as Dior sighs and tucks himself closer.

“It frightens me that I won’t know where they’re going. And that they’ll leave me alone, forever.” Dior says, his voice muffled against Celegorm’s shoulder. “I know I can’t compare to either of them.” Celegorm continues stroking his cheek. Wiping his thumbs beneath Dior’s eyes when they come away wet, again.

“It’s unfair.” Dior whispers. “Because Mother and Father will leave soon. And Grandfather’s always so sad when he looks at Mother. And I get sad too, because I know I’m nothing close to her or father. I know I can’t ever replace her.” He bites his tongue, wondering if he’s said too much.

“Dior…” Celegorm trails off. Dior blinks hard, breathing deeply and swallowing the sobs that bubble up. He’s cried enough these past few days. Celegorm strokes his hair. It feels good, and Dior catches his hand. Twines their fingers tightly together.

“King Thingol sent Beren to steal the silmaril from Morgoth Bauglir because he thought it was impossible for your father to steal it. An impossible price, for the treasure he guarded most carefully.” He speaks hesitantly, like he’s having difficulty finding the right words. Dior smiles when Celegorm brushes the knuckles of their twined fingers against Dior’s face. Celegorm falls silent, watching him.

“I stole you. I hurt you.” He says at last. Kissing Dior, very softly, in the middle of his forehead. Dior recognizes it for the apology it is. “You are a treasure more precious than all of my Father’s silmarils put together. I made you believe otherwise.” He trails off. Dior stares at him, his heart beating so hard that it hurts.

“It’s my turn to say I’m sorry.” Celegorm says quietly. He says nothing else, but he holds Dior closer against him, as Dior burrows his face against his chest, Celegorm catching and wiping away the few stray tears that escape the corner of his eyes. 

\--

Celegorm recovers, but they don’t venture out of the cave, except to check on and feed Rocco in his makeshift barn. It’s snowing too hard, and they wouldn’t be able to see properly if they tried, anyhow. The cave is small enough that the fire they build at its mouth can warm it sufficiently, and apart from the dull, flat flavour of the waybread, for the moment they want for nothing.

Celegorm preoccupies himself with carving. A robin joins Dior’s collection, along with a kingfisher, and a swan. Dior likes watching him as he works.

“Are you planning on carving me a whole aviary?” Dior asks as he was working on the robin. Celegorm raises an eyebrow at him.

“What makes you think this is for you?” He asks. Dior just gives him a sunny grin, completely gratified at the way Celegorm’s breath audibly catches in his throat. Celegorm’s lips twitch up. Then like he’s thinking of something, he sets down the robin and reaches into the pack where he kept his medical equipment. He takes out the hairpin he was working on, months before. Dior startles when he realizes it’s been four months to the day Celegorm had taken him.

“I actually planned on giving it to you, before. Your hair was such a mess.” Celegorm says. He tucks Dior’s hair back, then gathers it into a knot, pushes the hairpin through the base. Dior’s face warms at how gentle Celegorm’s hands are.

“Couldn’t risk your using it as a makeshift weapon, though. Now I know better. Since you couldn’t bring yourself to poison me, I certainly have no reason to fear you’ll stab me in the eye with it.” Celegorm catches Dior’s hand when he tries to smack his shoulder, brushes his lips against Dior’s fingers. Dior’s blush deepens, and Celegorm grins. Dior grins back, his face warm as he touches the end of the hairpin. He wears it in his hair all day.

That night, he brushes his lips against Celegorm’s, just at the corner of his mouth before they fall asleep. Celegorm’s gaze flickers as Dior blushes, painfully conscious of the fact that he does not know the first thing about kissing outside of the stories he’d read and songs he’d listened to. His stomach flutters and his breath stutters as Celegorm moves forward and gently covers his mouth with his. Pressing down and licking at his lips and Dior opens his mouth obediently, remembering Celegorm feeding him like he was a baby bird, and heat pools in Dior’s belly as Celegorm tastes him, licking at the walls of his cheeks. Drawing back, then deepening the kiss as Dior shyly responds. They kiss until Dior is aching with want, but at the press of Celegorm’s hand between his legs, he gasps and balks. Drawing back and tucking his knees against his chest. Celegorm pulls away, gives him space to breathe, for the fire in his skin to die down, for the hardness between his legs to recede, and after a few moments, Dior scoots closer. Celegorm drops a kiss against his forehead and tucks him close, humming softly to him until he falls asleep.

Dior dreams. He dreams of wolves, smiling with too many teeth, their muzzles covered in blood as they gather around his bed. And then it’s just the one wolf, laying his head on Dior’s lap. Whining as Dior stroked its side and the exposed softness of its belly. The wolf stands, looming over Dior. His teeth sharp but gentle as he holds Dior’s throat between his jaws and doesn’t bite down.

 _“Huinya.”_ The wolf strips off his pelt, revealing the white shape of a man beneath. Celegorm nuzzles at Dior’s neck as he tucks the pelt around him. Lips tracing down his forehead, his cheek, pressing against his mouth. This part, Dior isn’t certain is a dream. He sighs, kisses back.

He opens his eyes, aching with want, to find himself alone. He can hear Rocco neighing outside, Celegorm whispering something to soothe him, and Dior curls up in bed. Every inch of his skin set alight, and he waits for the knife-sharp longing to subside before getting up. Pulling on his clothes and stumbling out.

Dior pokes his head out, and almost wishes he hadn’t.

Celegorm has taken his shirt off. His hands are covered in red. Celegorm raises his eyebrows at him, and Dior stares from him to the deer carcass he’s working on. Its legs and head already severed. _A doe,_ Dior notes in absent horror. Thin and starved, her ribs visible through her skin. She must have been separated from her herd on their way to warmer, greener places for the winter, and Dior sees why. One the legs that Celegorm had severed is twisted. Her eye is a gaping wound from where he had ripped out the arrow, blood soaking the ground around him.

Dior feels sick. Celegorm stands up, holding the hunting knife out to Dior, wooden handle first, already slick with blood. 

“You need to help me skin this.” He says. “I’m too tired to do it all by myself.” Dior stares at the knife, then at the doe. He can feel the echo of her fear, even through her corpse. Rocco whickers nervously, but calms down when Dior runs a hand down his nose. He doesn’t take a knife, and Celegorm looks at him, his expression patient but firm.

“You do realize I’m hungry, too?” He points out. “And so are you. We need food, and you need to learn to eat something more than stale waybread and stolen squirrel stores, unless you intend to compete with poor Rocco for his feed.” Dior stares at him. The shadow of his ribs pressing against his skin. The angular lines of his face, sharper than they had been the first time Dior had seen him with his hood down.

He steps forward. Before he can take the knife, he feels Celegorm’s hand heavy on the back of his neck, gently forcing him down. The other presses the knife into Dior’s hand. Celegorm’s hand is heavy, sticky with blood. Dior doesn’t look at his face, instead staring at the ruin of the doe’s skull.

“You can’t keep your hands clean forever, _huinya_.” Celegorm says, softer this time. “Now.” He says briskly, “What you need to do is gut her first-“ Dior forces himself to listen as Celegorm walks him through skinning his first carcass. He cannot keep his hands shaking as he drags the knife down the thin skin of her belly. Intestines steaming in the air and Dior gags at the stench of blood but Celegorm’s quiet tone and the gentle hand on the back of his neck keep him going. Gore covering him up to the elbows as Celegorm guides him in peeling the skin off.

Dior stops thinking. His mind going quiet and there’s nothing but red, nothing but the feel of flesh giving beneath the knife, his horror a muted thing as he remembers his friends’ screams, sees their blood, the blood of the orc he killed as if it was happening all over again. Forcing his thoughts away, and Dior thinks of his dream. He thinks of Celegorm’s mouth closed around his neck. He thinks of Celegorm’s heart, heavy in his hands. He doesn’t pull away, he doesn’t speak. He drops the knife just as they’ve finished cutting the deer into parts.

“Dior…” Celegorm’’s tone is careful. Gentle. Dior returns, lifts his gaze to Celegorm’s, and all he can think about is how very tired he is of being treated gently.

His bloodied hands catch in Celegorm’s pale hair just as Celegorm grabs his face, yanking him down into a rough kiss.

It’s a graceless thing, full of feral hunger and need. Celegorm curses as he bites down too hard on his lower lip. Pulling back and grinning, and Dior shivers at the feral, ravenous hunger on Celegorm’s face. He pulls Dior to him, and Dior shivers as Celegorm’s fingers rake down the back of his neck, sending goosebumps shivering across his skin and heat between his legs as his hands touch Celegorm’s body, everywhere he can reach, smearing blood against his skin. Drowning out the memories in sensation, the weight of Celegorm’s body against his.

CCelegorm slides the hairpin out, grasps a handful of hair and tugs on it, sending a jolt through Dior’s spine. His teeth on Dior’s neck and Dior gives a startled shout as Celegorm _bites,_ his nails raking down Celegorm’s back more by accident than anything else, sharp lines scoring the skin of his back, his skin stained red. Dior can feel his ribs beneath his skin. He thinks of the doe, shivers as Celegorm bites and sucks at the skin of his neck. He’s already hard, and Celegorm is, too, beneath his breeches. Before Dior knows it, Celegorm has shoved him back into the cave, down on the furs. Tugging open his shirt and yanking it down Dior’s shoulders. Cold air hits Dior’s skin, and he shivers. Celegorm kisses him again, hard enough to make him swoon.

“I’m going to eat you whole.” Celegorm purrs, soothes. Stroking up and down Dior’s back, and Dior arches against him, gasping, dizzy and overwhelmed. Celegorm pulling back to yank Dior’s and his boots off, unlacing Dior’s breeches and when he’s done and Dior is naked and exposed beneath him, he stops. Bracing himself with one hand on the floor, the other heavy on Dior’s hip, drawing circles on the feathered skin. _Drinking in his fill._ Dior thinks, and it’s with shy hands that he reaches up, starts in on Celegorm’s own breeches. Celegorm’s length hot and heavy in his hand and Celegorm lets out a deep groan that goes all the way through Dior. Dior gives him a squeeze, then slides his hand lower, curious. Celegorm lets out a choked-off snarl, leaning his forehead against Dior’s. Dior dizzy with the scent of blood and his hand shakes as he moves it up and down, his touch light, his thumb wiping at the thin, clear fluid dribbling from the tip and Dior gasps when Celegorm reaches down, takes him in hand, too. Touching him far more skilfully than Dior is, his hand sliding up and down his sheath, fondling his balls. Celegorm watching him as he sighs and gasps, smiling faintly. 

“Your eyes have gone black.” Celegorm murmurs against his mouth. “Exactly like a bird’s.” Dior kisses him, tastes blood, and then cries out as Celegorm lets him go, tugging Dior’s hand away from his length and pinning it over his head, then grinding down against him. Almost crushing him with his weight and Dior’s cry is swallowed up by Celegorm’s kiss. His body curving up to meet Celegorm’s, his free hand spanning Celegorm’s broad back, and Celegorm thrusts against him, his length hot against the seam of Dior’s thigh as he ruts, and Dior can feel the liquid fire inside of him burning, burning him up.

“ _Celegorm,_ ” Dior gasps. Teeth and blood and Celegorm’s eyes with an animal light in them. Celegorm lets out a growl, thrusting against Dior, and Dior comes with a choked-off shout. With one final thrust against him, Celegorm follows, his teeth sinking into Dior’s neck, skin breaking deep enough to scar.

It’s a while before the world returns. Dior blinking open, damp lashes brushing against his cheeks. Celegorm rubs his face against Dior’s, nipping at his throat as Dior trembles and clutches him close, the smell of blood heavy in the air around them.

\---

Dior falls asleep curled up against Celegorm, Celegorm sucking lazy kisses up and down the curve of his neck and throat. He wakes up to the sizzle and smell of roasting meat, to find himself wrapped up in blankets and Celegorm’s cloak. As Dior pushes himself up, he finds that Celegorm has washed off the blood from his hands and the back of his neck.

Celegorm is watching him. Dior blinks at him, drowsy. Trying to catch his gaze and Celegorm laughs quietly. 

“We’re not married, if that’s what you’re worried about, _huinya_.” He nips playfully at the end of Dior’s nose. “It takes a little more than that. “ Dior tries to quash the odd disappointment that rises up with the relief at that, and then Celegorm drags a bag of hawthorn berries and nuts between them.

Dior’s mouth opens obediently as Celegorm starts to feed him, cracking open the nuts and wiping the juice as it runs down Dior’s chin. Heat pools between Dior’s legs, and he shifts, wrapping the cloak tighter around himself, wincing as it chafes against the bitemarks and scratches Celegorm had marked his body with. Celegorm’s hand lingers on Dior’s cheek, where Celegorm had struck him twice. The bruises have long healed, but Celegorm still drops his gaze when Dior looks at him.

There’s a lot of hawthorn berries and nuts. Celegorm must have been up since dawn to gather them, must have raided practically every single squirrel’s store just to make sure Dior had something to eat, probably while stalking the deer. After Dior swallows the last berry, Celegorm presses his thumb against Dior’s bottom lip, and Dior laps gently at his fingertips. Celegorm’s fingers taste very faintly of blood. Celegorm inhales sharply, and Dior flushes.

“You…” Celegorm starts and does not finish. Dior wordlessly reaches for the plate of meat. Lifts one between his fingers and holds it out to Celegorm’s lips. It’s still warm. Celegorm’s gaze is dark. He takes the meat from Dior’s fingers. The meat is bloody, and Dior shifts, flushing when Celegorm’s gaze snags on his exposed skin. The marks his mouth and his touch had left.

Celegorm finishes the meat, licks Dior’s hand clean, and Dior trembles as Celegorm mouths at his pulse. There is still blood in his hair. Dior reaches forward with his free hand tucks it behind his ears, trying to work at the clots and Celegorm laughs.

“Proud of your work, _huinya_?” Dior keeps working at the knot with his fingers.

“You keep calling me little pup.” His voice is soft, but he looks straight at Celegorm as he speaks. “I’m not the dog here.” Celegorm has him pinned flat on his back before the next breath, grip tight as he jerks Dior’s wrists up above his head.

 _Hounds think you’re challenging them if you stare too long,_ Dior remembers. He opens his mouth, and Celegorm freezes. Stops, his hands keeping Dior’s wrists pinned down. His body covering Dior’s own. If Dior struggles, Celegorm will let him go. If he says it hurts, Celegorm will stop. If Dior asks for food, for a story, for a kiss, he’ll give it.

(But he will not set Dior free. Dior doubts if he'll ever be able to do so.)

There’s something panicked in Celegorm’s eyes. An animal, realizing for the first time how trapped it is. Dior wonders, for a moment, if the bittersweet triumph tempered with tenderness coursing through his chest is similar to what his mother felt when she had Sauron on his knees before her. A hard-won victory, but her journey was not yet done.

Neither is Dior’s.

Dior pulls one hand free and reaches up, stroking and scratching gently at Celegorm’s ear. Celegorm’s eyes flicker halfway shut, and he makes a low sound in his throat, halfway between a growl and a whine. Dior cups his face with his palm and Celegorm pushes his face into his hand. Dior tilts his head up and kisses Celegorm very softly, on the lips. Celegorm exhales, shaky, releases Dior’s wrists, and Dior gasps as Celegorm nudges his thighs apart and crawls between them, taking him in hand. Dior wrapping his arms around his shoulders and the weight of Celegorm’s body is the only thing he knows for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said, Celegorm is whipped and to his horror knows it. 
> 
> Comments are appreciated. :D


	9. Chapter 9

Winter deepens. A dreamy, quiet time. The waybread runs out. There are no berries or apples left, despite Celegorm and Dior’s best attempts to forage. Dior can feel Celegorm’s worry bristling at him. After two days stretching out the remaining waybread to the last crumb, Dior is weak and exhausted, listing limply back against Celegorm, Celegorm holding him close, keeping him warm.

That night, Celegorm boils an additional portion of the deer into a broth for Dior. Dior looks at the steaming brown liquid and the chunk of meat and bone bobbing on the surface, and even though his belly rumbles, he feels nauseous.

“ _Huinya_ , you have to eat. It’ll make you sick now, but you need to get used to it. There’ll be even less food later.” Celegorm’s voice is low, like he’s soothing a sick hound. Dior looks at the meat, the barren bushes and trees around him, the ground covered by a thin layer of snow. After an agonizing moment, he takes the bowl.

Celegorm holds his hair back as he retches. Murmuring something soft and low in Quenya that Dior can’t understand and doesn’t care to, when he’s hating, hating, hating him and his guts feel like they’re trying to crawl out of his mouth and rip open his throat on the way out. When his stomach is emptier than it had been since he ate the meat, he sags back against Celegorm’s chest. His chest and stomach are burning and his mouth tastes foul. He keeps remembering the doe’s round, frightened eyes, the taste of her heavy on his tongue even as he tries to rinse it out with boiled snow. Dior shudders as he wipes his mouth. 

“You’ll get used to it.” Celegorm murmurs as he holds Dior in his lap, stroking his hair. Dior says nothing. Limp as a rag doll in Celegorm’s arms, wanting to get away as much as he doesn’t want to move. Wanting to crawl into him, slit him open like a second skin and stay there where it was warm and quiet and dark. He wants to go home. He wants to be nowhere else but here.

“What if I don’t want to?” Diors voice is soft. Celegorm’s chest moves behind him.

“Wanting has nothing to do with it. You learn to survive, or you don’t.” Dior turns around so that he’s straddling Celegorm.

 _“I don’t want to get used to it_.” He says. His voice is sharp, reed-thin and just as brittle. For a moment, Celegorm almost looks pitying. Then he kisses Dior, hard and full on the mouth. Dior remembers his first taste of blood. Celegorm’s blood, chasing the memory of it down by biting at Celegorm’s lips. _See, this is what you turned me into._ Celegorm’s hands heavy on his waist as they impatiently tug at his shirt and slip beneath to the skin of his back. Tugging down his trousers until he’s naked.

“ _Huinc_ _ë_.” Celegorm growls between kisses, skimming the jugular and lapping at the beat of Dior’s blood. “ _Huinya_. My little pup. _Mine_ -“ Dior twines his arms around Celegorm’s shoulders as Celegorm pushes him down, covering his body with his.

Time slips by. Hours blending into each other. Fucking, talking, eating, sleeping. Dior stops throwing up at the taste of meat, though he still eats as little as possible. The winds outside drive brutally against their shelter, but inside the cave is snug and warm.

“You look so young when you talk about Valinor.” Dior observes one afternoon. Or was it night? It was hard to tell. He has his chin propped up on his hands, and he can feel Celegorm’s heartbeat beneath his palms.

“I barely remember it. Feels like a dream that someone else had half-forgotten.” Celegorm traces a circle on his back. Dior smiles when Celegorm curls his fingers around the ends of his hair, giving it a gentle tug before drawing the fur blankets up around them both. It’s almost too warm, but Dior likes it that way.

“I’m not the person you took from the forest path, either.” Dior muses, and the guilt that flashes across Celegorm’s face is almost too swift to be seen. Dior nestles against him, their bodies curving around each other.

“Do you miss it? Being the hunter?” He asks against Celegorm’s skin. Celegorm lets out a breath.

“I was never the hunter, _huinya_.” He says. Dior cups Celegorm’s face between his hands so Celegorm can’t look away.

Silence.

“She might still be alive, your bodyguard.” Celegorm says after a long moment. Dior’s heart leaps. “Your… Nimloth, right? She escaped before I could finish her off. And I kept you drugged the whole way here because the Doriathrin guard had already been alerted.” His fingers drift down Dior’s back, fingers splayed out on the small of it. “We lost them in the cave. I’m sorry I starved you. I needed to keep you from running away and into them.”

“Did you kill them, too?” Dior asks. His voice is soft. Celegorm tries to look away, but Dior keeps his hands on his cheeks. Keeps him looking straight at him. “Like how you killed my guards by sending those orcs after us?” Now Celegorm can’t hide the stricken expression that flashes across his face.

“How-when?” He starts. Dior shrugs.

“Seemed like something you would do. Surround your prey with enemies and lead them straight to you.” _I had business that took me near Doriath, and that business involved those orcs._ The orcs had driven him away from his guard into Celegorm’s arms.

Celegorm is silent. Dior’s hands on either side of his face keep him from looking away. There is no forgiveness in Dior’s heart, but no hate, either. What he feels for Celegorm is precisely the opposite, with the warmth that blooms in his chest when Celegorm holds him close. He’s trapped, as surely as he had been the first time Celegorm tied him up, lying in the arms of the person who killed his friends. And he knows Celegorm is, too.

“Go to sleep, _Laerlilin_.” Celegorm says at last. Dior imagines he can see the shadow of the Oath, pooling dark beneath his eyes. He lets Celegorm go, curls up against Celegorm’s chest, wishing he could drive it away like it was some dread enchantment. Celegorm lifts his hand to cup the back of his neck, and Dior turns his head, very gently kissing the scarred-over bite mark he’d left on Celegorm’s wrist.

He drifts off to Celegorm stroking his hair. He knows Celegorm won’t be able to sleep tonight.

\--

If possible, it gets even colder. That doesn’t stop Dior from exploring. He doesn’t wander very far, and Celegorm is always a few paces behind him, but his feet are light on the tree branches. He smiles when Celegorm warns him not to slip off.

“You sound worse than Eme!” he calls out. Laughing out loud at the affront on his lover’s face while fighting off the guilt in his gut when he thinks of his family, searching for him. And then his laughter fades when he remembers it must be some days past Yule now, and this year his family, and his friends’ families, had been thoroughly deprived of joy. He doesn’t notice Celegorm catching up to him until he’s reaching out and cradling his face. Dior forces himself to smile at him before darting away, up and up until he reaches the top of the sea of trees and is left blinking and almost blinded by the pale winter sky. 

“Why do you always head to the very top?” Celegorm grumbles as Dior starts to climb down the tree, Celegorm anxiously waiting for him beneath. “If you fall and break your neck, you’ll wind up in Mandos and what will the people who love you do then?” Then he falls silent, like he hadn’t meant for that to slip out. Avoiding Dior’s gaze. Dior stares at him, then lets go of the branch he’s holding onto. Celegorm blanches as he scrambles forwards and though the force of the fall knocks the wind out of him, Dior’s laughing as Celegorm catches him barely three feet off the ground.

“You utter and absolute _child._ ” Celegorm says, but he sounds less resigned and more hopelessly fond. Dior grins at him as he leans their foreheads together. Leaving a bright kiss on Celegorm’s lips before he’s struggling free and bounding off again up the branches, laughing as Celegorm follows him.

It’s a little later, back in their cave, when Dior says he wishes he could see the stars.

“So you can figure out where you are.” Celegorm says wryly. Dior shrugs.

“I miss them. Don’t you? The real ones. Not the one embroidered on your doublet.” Dior spreads his hand out on Celegorm’s chest. Celegorm gently takes his hand, kisses his palm. He does not answer. Dior sleeps, and he dreams of mother and father, calling out for him in the dark woods. He wakes up with tears running down his face, Celegorm holding him and whispering soft nothings into his ear until he stops shaking.

He thinks that’s the end of it, but two nights later, Dior is woken by Celegorm nuzzling him awake.

“ _Huinya._ Wake up.” Dior blinks at him, Celegorm drops a kiss on his forehead, Dior frowns at him in confusion, and Celegorm brushes his hair back.

“Follow me,” Celegorm says. “Wear the cloak and your gloves. It’s cold.” Dior gets up, rubbing at his eyes as he gets dressed.

“Where are we going?” Dior asks, yawning. Celegorm doesn’’t answer, but he takes Dior by the hand.

Celegorm’s hand is so much bigger, and it’s warm even through Dior’s glove. Dior, his eyes half-shut from exhaustion, allows himself to be led through the trees, and when they emerge into a clearing Dior gasps at what he finds there.

The stars. 

Dior steps out through the gap in the trees, mesmerized. It had been so long since he’d seen the open sky, but yes. There’s Elenmîr, glittering from on high. Gwilwileth, the butterfly with her wings spread. Thorondûn, the fearsome eagle pointing to the West. Menelmagor, the Swordsman of the Sky. The Valacirca. Hanging above like the familiar faces of friends smiling down at him. 

“The sky cleared up just tonight.” Celegorm says. Dior barely notices himself falling to his knees. He doesn’t even notice himself murmuring a quiet prayer to Varda. He only remembers Celegorm is there when he hears the quiet shift of the older elf’s step. But Celegorm doesn’t silence him, or mock his prayer. He leans against the trunk of a gnarled oak a short distance away, watching Dior. Keeping his distance, as if he’s unwilling to intrude.

The starlight gleams over the hash lines on his face. For a moment, Dior thinks he sees the weight of all the years pressing down on him, all the bloodshed and loss and the ever-present shadow of the Oath suffocating him as surely as Morgoth’s blight in the East. And it terrifies Dior. He could be looking at his own future. Would he still recognize himself as himself, after millennia had passed? How long until he realized he had become someone else – something else entirely? Did the young hunter who rode with Oromë and had a Maia for a loyal companion ever think it would all come to this?

And who else, Dior wonders, would ever have thought to bring him back? To push away the darkness of the Oath and Morgoth’s war that hung over the Sons of Fëanor like a pall. The hunter who saved his people during the Dagor Bragollach and the wolf who captured his mother. They were the same person, still. 

“The sky is above you, _huinc_ _ë_.” Celegorm’s voice is low and amused, but very tired. Like he can read Dior’s thoughts. “Surely you’re sick of looking at my face.” Dior starts, feeling his face heat up. He hadn’t realized he was staring.

“Pray with me.” He blurts out. Celegorm stares at him, and Dior pats the ground at his side. 

“Come on.” He says. He pats the ground again, more insistently. Celegorm’s smiling faintly, but more bitter than feral. Dior thinks he’s about to refuse him, and he turns away, feeling foolish. But then Celegorm speaks.

“I’m damned before the eyes of the gods. I will not pray.” He says slowly. “But I will sit with you while you do so, if you allow it.”

 _If you allow it._ Dior feels his cheeks heat again. He thinks of Celegorm in his dream, feeding him his heart, tucking his own pelt around him. _It’s rotten meat. Are you sure you want it?_ Well. Dior does, and now he has it.

“I’m allowing it now.” Dior says, putting all the command of a Prince of Doriath in his voice. Celegorm’s smile softens as he sinks to the ground beside him on one knee. Close enough that Dior’s shoulder brushes against his. He sideways. Lets his head rest on Celegorm’’s shoulder. Though he’s done this a hundred times, Celegorm’s breath still catches. Dior swallows, feeling Celegorm’s gaze burning into him.

 _Please._ Dior whispers to the sky, and he doesn’t know what he’s praying for, exactly. Or to who. To Varda, or Oromë. To the One, perhaps. To anyone who had the power to change fate. His body curves towards Celegorm’s at its own accord, seeking warmth. He dozes off to the sensation of gentle fingers stroking through his hair, strong arms scooping him up and holding him cradled against his chest. Keeping him warm, like he always does. Dior opens his eyes, presses a hand right over his heart, where the eight-pointed star should be.

“What are you thinking about, Dior?” Celegorm’s voice is very tender. Dior exhales. He tugs off his gloves – the gloves Celegorm had made him - and takes Celegorm’s hands in his

 _It takes a little more than that._ Holding his hands palm to palm. Waiting for a moment. Giving himself one last moment to think before stepping off into the precipice.

The Darkness had already taken so much from this world. Dior will not allow Celegorm to be taken, too. He opens his mouth, begins to speak.

 _“With Varda and Manw_ _ë as my witness, I pledge my oath…”_ Celegorm’s eyes widen. He tries to jerk his hand away, but Dior holds fast. Celegorm’s wide and _frightened,_ but Dior doesn’t let him go. His words trapping him in place as surely as Celegorm had, all those months ago.

Dior finishes speaking. The oath hangs around them. Incomplete, and Dior perceives it as a web of silver light. Celegorm stares. His gaze is soft and full of pain. Dior blinks, his own eyes stinging as Celegorm lets him go. The web around them shivering, but just as it begins to fade, Celegorm cradles his face between his hands, starts to speak.

“No Vala, no demon from Morgoth’s deeps. No brother,” This he forces out from his lips. “Or ally. Or self. No oath or promise will I allow to harm you. I will not allow you to be destroyed.” The web flares, and then it’s gone. But Dior can feel it between them, a spun silver cage.

Dior swallows. One last step. He and Celegorm standing at the same time, Dior taking Celegorm’s hand in his.

He barely remembers the walk home. Only when they reach the cave, Celegorm kisses him, pressing him down against their furs and tugging at his clothes. Dior reaching up to do the same with his. They strip each other, slow and careful. None of Celegorm’s characteristic haste, and Dior knows this restraint is for him. As Celegorm Dior kisses him back, pouring all his need, all his tenderness into the kiss. Celegorm pulls back, strokes his thumb down his cheek.

“Are you certain?” He asks. His voice is barely audible. Almost fragile. Dior nods.

“Why?” He sounds almost angry.

“Because you need a reason to remember being the hunter.” Dior whispers. “I'll be that reason.” He kisses Celegorm before he can protest, holds him tight before he can pull away. Celegorm goes stiff but after a while he gives in, kisses him back, slow, and they’re as gentle with each other as they hadn’t been during their first coupling. Celegorm’s thumb pressing over the now-healed bitemark on Dior’s neck, and Dior pulls away so he can clasp his hand, kiss the scar on Celegorm’s wrist and tangle their fingers together around their cocks. Grinning and laughing softly at the slack-jawed expression on Celegorm’s face as he squeezes, sets the pace.

“ _Huinya,”_ Celegorm breathes against his mouth. His voice sounds broken. His hips stuttering in the circle of Dior’s fingers but Dior keeps the pace slow. Celegorm showering kisses against his half-open mouth, his collarbones, his neck, everywhere he can reach. “ _Dior.”_ It’s little more than a sigh. Dior swallows, arching up against Celegorm. Squeezing, sliding up and down. Their joined hands sticky and Dior knows they’re both close. Familiar fire building inside of him, and something else. A presence both unfamiliar and beloved, building in the back of his mind along with the bonds of his oath and Celegorm’s, tightening between them. 

For a moment, he thinks he’s seeing himself through Celegorm’s eyes. And then he feels the overpowering wave of need, shame, and fierce, unguarded devotion and love, and he cries out as the bonds flare bright, becoming one. Feeling so small in the wave of it, but he pushes fear aside, letting his own trust and faith consume him – consume them both as he falls.

When he comes to, they’re both lying curled up around each other, collapsed on top of their furs. Sticky, sated. Dior’s head feels simulataneously very light and weighed down. And then, there. That presence. Sparking across his mind.

“Celegorm?” Dior’s whisper sounds small and lost even to his own ears. Celegorm clings tighter to him, breathing hard, his hand over Dior’s heart. His eyes bright, and not just with tears. Dior grabs at it with his own shaking fingers, his eyes stinging. The two of them curled around each other, breathing in time with each other, grasping each other in the dark.

\---

They speak little, after. There is no need for words. Dior doesn’t think Celegorm sleeps at all. Whenever he stirs, it’s to find Celegorm watching him. It’s strange, seeing the brightness in Celegorm’s – in his _husband’s -_ eyes and knowing he was staring at part of himself. Judging by how gently Celegorm traces beneath his eyes, he finds it just as strange. And though he can’t quite feel his husband’s emotions all the time – only when a particularly strong wave of it hit, or in moments of great intimacy – he senses him there all the same. With him, in him.

“What will you do now?” Dior asks Celegorm. He’d woken up to find Celegorm gazing at the flames, almost absently whittling at a piece of wood between his fingers. Dior had yawned and plopped beside him, placing his head on Celegorm’s shoulder and watching him work. The shape he’s carving forming beneath his hands.

“Bring you back to Amon Ereb. Introduce you as my bridegroom. Maitimo. Will not be very pleased. Then again nothing I do has pleased him since Nargothrond. Curvo…” he exhales, pulls Dior closer against him. “Will likely seek to use you against Thingol. I will not let him. Or…” he trails off. Uncertainty and a fierce protectiveness pulsing through him. When Dior prods him again, he doesn’t answer, but he kisses Dior on the forehead.

“I stand by my oath. Nothing will harm you.” He says quietly. And Dior trusts him, so he believes him. He watches him work in silence. It’s only a few minutes later that Celegorm places two rings made of golden wood in the middle of his palm. One slightly bigger than the other, the both of them with the texture of silk.

“It’s no silmaril. Beren has me quite soundly beaten in that.” Celegorm takes Dior’s right hand. Watching him closely as he slides the ring onto Dior’s finger, and Dior swallows at the light weight of it against his skin. He takes the bigger ring and Celegorm kisses him as Dior slips it onto his. The two of them holding the world at bay, just for a little while longer.

\---

Winter snows give way to sleet and rain. The cold disappears little by little. Dior darts out of the cave one morning and to his delight, the branches are beginning to bud again.

“Very soon you’ll be a little bird fluttering along the treetops.” Celegorm muses. Dior touches at a little green fern that had sprouted up overnight.

“In Tol Galen, the hills would be white with niphredil.” He says. All of a sudden, he wants to cry. Wants to crumple up in a ball in this new spring day and bawl his eyes out for his friends, his mother, his father, his grandparents. His husband cradles him against his chest, silent, until the feeling passes and Dior wipes his eyes, gets to his feet.

\---

Taur-im-Duinath’s gloom eases, a little. The scent of petrichor hangs heavy in the air. Beneath their feet are small white flowers that look nothing close to niphredil but somehow seem to glow in the dark. They crumble by the next morning.

They leave their cave. Dior feels a strange sense of grief as they pack up. Some instinct telling him he won’t pass this way again in his life that he can’t shake off. Celegorm watches him closely, but he doesn’t respond when Dior asks him what’s wrong.

They walk. They sleep wherever the ground is more dirt than mud. Dior thinks he can see the stars shining through the gaps in the leaves, but he’s not certain. Celegorm holds him tightly, as if he’s afraid he’ll lose him. Dior thinks of his family, missing them. Wondering what Amon Ereb will be like, how the Fëanorians will react to their brother’s new bridegroom. He worries, childishly, if they’re going to like him. He wonders how he can avert the war his Grandfather would doubtless wage once he found out where he would be.

And then one morning, Celegorm takes Dior’s hand.

“Let’s take a walk. Leave Rocco for a bit, he needs a rest.” Dior gets to his feet, stretches. Doesn’t mention the odd look on Celegorm’s face, but he can feel the roiling guilt and regret in him, darkening him like a shadow. Celegorm reaches out for him, holds him for a moment. Dior hugs him back, and the darkness eases. Celegorm sighs. Turns away, guiding Dior forwards into a trail. 

“Sing for me?” Celegorm asks suddenly. And he sounds so tired that Dior doesn’t want to obey him. Wants to take him by the shoulders and ask him what’s wrong. But the exhaustion on Celegorm’s face stops him. This is the first time Celegorm’s asked him to sing for him.

Dior starts to sing, wordless. Halting at first, gaining in strength as memory takes over, He sings for the pure joy of it, and terrible sorrow and longing for home. Of love and a promise. Celegorm doesn’t stop him like he had those first terrible weeks. He listens to him, silent. Dior ends in one high, pure note, the sound of it shivering in the air. When Dior looks at his husband, his eyes are glittering. Dior blinks, and Celegorm kisses him. Somehow fiercely tender, holding Dior’s face between his hands like he’s trying to memorize his features and before Dior can ask him what’s wrong, he hears it.

The baying of hounds. Voices raised in warning. Familiar ones.

“I heard something!” Nimloth. Celegorm traces his thumb down Dior’s cheek, smiling faintly. The hounds howl, and Dior knows they’ve picked up his scent.

Dior feels a lump rise in his throat. He forces his lips to move. Terrible hope, and terrible grief crashing down on him. He’s not sure whose it is.

“You knew they were there.” Celegorm smiles at him as he kisses him again. 

“Run, _huinya_.” Celegorm says. His voice is rough. “Run free.” Dior stands still for a moment. Celegorm’s palm is warm on his cheek. One step, and then back. It’s the hardest thing Dior has ever done. He has to stifle a cry as Celegorm’s hand falls from his shoulder. Taking an involuntary step forwards, but Celegorm shakes his head, draws back.

“It’s time for you to go home, _Laerlilin.”_ Celegorm’s voice breaks. So does Dior’s heart.

“Celegorm…” He starts to speak, but cannot. There are no words left to say. Dior takes one step back, another before he forcibly wrenches his gaze away from Celegorm’s and turns. He pauses, his heart pounding, for just one moment before he breaks into a run.

Dior waits for strong arms to catch him around his waist, crush him against a broad chest. For a hand to wrap around his mouth and hold back his cry of relief. But as his feet fly on the muddy ground he feels no footsteps gaining on him in pursuit. Nothing following him relentlessly from behind. Dior runs and runs, until he hears shouts, the baying hounds, and crashes into his mother’s arms.

“ _Dior-!“_ Mother’s hair is streaked with more silver than when he saw it last, lines of grief carved on her face. But her scent is the same and her arms remain the safest stronghold Dior has ever known. More shouts, and Father’s haggard face breaks into raw joy when he sees him.

“ _My son_ -“ Father grabs him and Mother tight in his arms. “You’re home, you’re _home_ -“ Dior turns back, but Celegorm is gone. Mother’s arms wrap tight around him again, so tight around his shaking body, and Dior buries his face in her shoulder and starts to cry.

\----

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right near the end, folks. Thanks for sticking by, and for leaving kudos and comments. :D [Both of which are eternally appreciated]


	10. Chapter 10

His family makes as much fuss as he expected they would. Mother turns pale when she sees his eyes, Father’s jaw goes taut. They both tuck him between them when they get to Menegroth, gently trying to coax an answer out of him. But Dior doesn’t speak. He clings to his parents’ hands and shakes his head when Grandfather tries to question him, except to warn them about the underground passage that led to Taur-in-Duinath. The three of them balk at seeing the wooden ring, but Dior does not speak about who gave it to him.

“Let him rest.” It’s Grandmother’s soft voice that stops the gentle barrage of questions. “He’s exhausted.” Mother reluctantly obeys. Tucking Dior in, and she and Father watch over him as he sleeps.

Dior dreams of a wolf, walking in a dark forest alone. He wakes up in tears. Mother holds him against her breast until he stops crying. Father strokes his hair until he falls back asleep, clutching at the wooden ring in his palm.

His family asks him again the next day, and the next. Dior shakes his head, refuses to answer. Mother holds him in her arms, combing out the tangles in his hair. She stares at the hairpin when she removes it, her lips tight. Dior had been wearing it when Celegorm had let him go, had been wearing it ever since, but he keeps his silence at her questioning. Twisting the ring, over and over on his finger. Feeling horrible for the worry in her gaze, but he can’t let them know who took him. Doing so would mean open war, would lead to Doriath’s army slaughtered, would end in Celegorm dying on the battlefield or executed and Dior cannot, will not let that happen.

He can hear Mother and Father’s hushed conversations when they think he’s asleep. He forces himself not to stiffen in alarm when Celegorm’s name is mentioned, but neither Mother nor Father speak of him to Dior the next day. 

His little aviary he secrets away, in a jewelry box inlaid with mother of pearl that he’d emptied of its contents and stored under his bed. He only takes them out when Mother and Father aren’t around. The weight of another secret heavy in his chest, but he doesn’t want the risk of Mother recognizing Celegorm’s carvings. Every night, he takes it out. As he holds the little crane in his handl, a lump in his throat rises when he remembers the way Celegorm had torn his heart out and offered it to Dior.

He misses Celegorm so much that it hurts.)

Grandmother being Grandmother, she guesses first. Dior is sitting in the gardens, cradling Celegorm’s wooden crane in both his hands. when he looks up and finds her beside him, just the gentle rush of wind announcing her presence. Queen Melian’s grey eyes are luminous and soft, but to Dior’s relief, there is no anger or sorrow in them like in Mother’s.

“Hello, _Óm_ _ë_.” He whispers, reaching for her, and she folds him into her embrace. Her shoulders are bare; covered in feathers. Dior remembers the echo of Celegorm’s touch and has to fight back the tears.

She waits for him to speak. When he doesn’t, she takes his hair into her hands. Gathers two thick locks of it and starts to weave it into a braid that he recognizes married men wear.

“I had dreams about you.” She says. “Snatches of foresight. For some reason your whereabouts were shrouded from both me and Galadriel. Galadriel couldn’t even find you in her mirror. But I would see you, walking along a darkened forest path. Sometimes you were alone. Other times you were with a great white beast. I saw you with your neck between its jaws, once.” She brushes Dior’s hair away from his forehead. Dior slips the crane into his pocket, leans against her. The slight weight of the wooden ring is heavy around his finger.

“The last vision I had of you, you had the beast’s head on your lap, and you were speaking soft words to it while it licked your face. That was when I knew you were safe. In a manner of speaking, at least.” Grandmother ties off his braid with a silk ribbon. “What I didn’t tell your parents was that the beast had the star of Fëanor on its breast.” Dior stiffens. Grandmother calmly looks at him.

“Something stopped me from telling Thingol. Some knowing, or prescience. It was your battle to win, and none of us were allowed to interfere.” She cups Dior’s face between her palms as he turns towards her. “But know that I would have torched Taur-im-Duinath to the ground if it meant I could have stopped Lord Celegorm from laying his hands on you. It was him, wasn’t it?” Dior’s eyes drop down.

“I-“ He whispers. “Yes.” Kisses that tasted of blood. An oath made under the stars. Dior feels longing echo in his chest. “It was my idea to marry him.” Grandmother waits for him to finish. There is no judgment, or incredulity, or disbelief in her eyes. She just waits for him to give her his reasons, and he loves her so much it hurts.

“He’s the wolf. In Mother’s stories. But he was the hunter, before. I just-“ He stammers. “I just wanted to give him a reason to stop being the wolf, and become the hunter again. That was why.” His voice trails off, and as his shoulders start to shake, Grandmother enfolds him in her arms.

“Dior. Dearest.” Dior buries his face against her chest, inhaling the scent of petrichor and lilies that always hung about her. She kisses the top of his head, and his shoulders heave. “You are not a piece of meat to be offered as a sacrifice. If he so wishes to stop being the monster, that choice is on him and him alone.”

“I don’t want – I _can’t_ see him destroyed by their Oath, _Óm_ _ë_.” Dior whispers. His voice breaks. “It’s not right. It’s not _fair._ ” His voice and words sound hopelessly young to his own ears. Grandmother’s eyes are sad.

“Fëanor and his sons chose their own destruction, Dior. If Celegorm chooses to turn away from the fate they set for themselves, that is within his power. It is also within his power to prevent it from destroying _you._ ” Dior waits for her to continue, but she says nothing else.

“Have I damned us all?” Dior whispers. Grandmother does not shake her head, but she tucks his hair back behind his ear.

“The fate of this realm was decided that day your Grandfather decided on the silmaril as a fitting bride-price. That is beyond our control now. But about you and your bridegroom.” She stares deep into Dior’s eyes.

“Dearest, to never allow you to see him again. To free you for good and keep you safe from his brothers. That would prove his love for you is truer than any oath he ever gives you.” Dior’s tears bubble up, overflow. He buries his face in his Grandmother’s chest, and she holds him and lets him cry for long hours until it’s over.

\---

He takes to waiting by the edge of the Girdle. Not everyday – that would worry his parents more than they already are. He always brings a flute, or books along, trying to make it look like he’s simply out in the woods as he used to as a child. Mother remains unconvinced, but likely Grandmother spoke to her and Father, because they let him go with much less fuss than he expected.

He has his guard – the remnants of them, with new faces he is yet unfamiliar with -with him. Ubru is alive and bearing a scar that slices through half his face. Nimloth tries to make him laugh whenever she can, and the guilt presses heavier and heavier down Dior’s chest at their loyalty, their love. They accompany him the first time he visits their fallen friends’ graves, already covered in niphredil despite being so new. They sit together in silence for long hours, Dior holding onto Nimloth’s hand while Ubru strums a tune on Eiliant’s lute.

They never ask him about the ring he wears, though he sees Nimloth clearly reigning in her questions, and a sad knowing in Ubru’s expression. Whenever Dior goes to the woods, he quietly sends them away. Nimloth is stubborn and refuses to let him out of her sight, but caves in with a scowl when Ubru murmurs something to her that he doesn’t catch. But he’s just grateful when he manages to be alone for the first time since his return.

Lifting a flute up to his lips, he plays the lullaby that Celegorm sang for him. The other songs Celegorm had taught him. Waiting, but no gleaming golden star appears. No silver hair, no great white beast. The sky darkens and Nimloth arrives to tell him it’s time to go.

In the spring, he and his parents return to Tol Galen. Dior is quiet the whole time. Mother holds him in her arms, like she’s daring the woods to steal him away from her again. Dior’s feels a painful twist in his chest, but the words stick in his throat when he tries to speak. Mother sees, of course. She just holds him tighter, and Dior buries his face against her shoulder. He barely notices they’ve returned to Dor-Firn-i-Guinaruntil he sees the barge they’re taking back to Tol Galen. 

“Where have you gone?” Dior asks. The question hangs in the air, unanswered. Celegorm’s gone back home to his brothers, in Amon Ereb, doubtless. Thinking about Dior as much as Dior is thinking about him, his longing a cavernous hole in his chest.

Seasons pass. Spring, then summer. Autumn. Winter. Dior doesn’t take off the ring. He keeps his hair braided, Celegorm’s hairpin in place, keeps his carved little aviary hidden under his bed. He spends time with his parents, laughs and jokes and it’s almost the same as before. But he does not tell his parents who his husband is, though they ask, many times. Evading Mother and Father’s questions, guilt crawling up his throat at the sad look on Father’s face, the hidden pain on Mother’s. Learning to muffle the sound of his sobs after every nightmare so they don't come rushing into his bedchambers. And when he has time to spare in between training as Thingol’s Heir and his parents’ watchful gaze, he steals away to be alone. To wait.

 _To free you for good. That would prove his love for you truer than any oath he ever gives you._ Dior knows Grandmother is right, and the pain of never seeing Celegorm again almost breaks him when he allows himself to think of it for too long. So he doesn’t, not until he’s in the woods by himself, singing. Searching. One year passes. Then another.

“I miss you.” He says aloud. He’s back in Doriath, two years from the day he’d been taken. The leaves are just beginning to turn. Mother had seen him just as he was stealing away to make his way to the forest. She hadn’t stopped him, but her eyes had been full of sorrow as she held him for a moment before she let him go.

One day, he’ll tell her. One day. Dior buries his face between his knees, his shoulders shaking. Waits for the grief to pass.

And then. The sound of a twig breaking under someone’s heel. Dior wouldn’t have heard it if he hadn’t been so focused on anything but not focusing on his pain.

Dior jumps to his feet, running in the direction of where he heard it. His heart leaping when he sees the dark, hooded figure darting between the trees as fast as he can. An animal that had been trying to hide but was now taking flight upon his discovery. 

“ _Wait_ _!”_ Dior shouts. The cloaked figure doesn’t stop, too fast for Dior to catch up to, and for a moment Dior nearly sobs because he’s about to lose him again. Frantic, desperate, he reaches out, and then the figure stops, unable to move forwards. Trapped, the magic of the Girdle saturating the air and Dior wants to laugh as much as he wants to cry because he’s cornered his quarry the same way he had been chased down. Joy, piercing as grief he feels lancing through him as he practically crashes into Celegorm’s back, wrapping his arms tight around his waist.

“You came back to me.” Dior’s voice cracks. Celegorm shudders, every muscle in his body coiled with tension and his emotions the roar of a river's current, threatening to pull Dior under. Dior swallows, holds him tighter, holds him still. Keeping him from slipping away, his face buried against his nape. The forest dark all around them, and they’re the only two figures here. And then Celegorm turns, and Dior feels himself being caught up in strong arms. Celegorm crushing him against his chest and Dior laughs and weeps as he cups Celegorm’s face between his hands and tugs him down into a kiss. Hungry and desperate and so very gentle, Celegorm’s fingers dragging up and down the back of Dior’s neck and Dior melts against him, trembling. Clinging to Celegorm, terrified he’ll disappear if he loosens his grip.

“You’ve gotten taller, _huinya._ ” Celegorm’s voice is raw, little more than a harsh rasp against Dior’s lips. His face is thinner, his worn, dark clothes are unmarked by any crest or sigil. His eyes are alight with the desperation of a starving animal and Dior wants to ask him _how long have you been watching me? Did you ever return to your brothers, at all? Or were you always close by, without my knowing?_ He opens his mouth, but only a few gasped words tumble out between frantic kisses.

“I love you.” Dior says, and Celegorm flinches like he’d been struck, his eyes glittering too brightly in the autumn gloom, but Dior can feel the answering echo of Celegorm's own heart almost rushing in his own veins. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.” Dior pleads. “I missed you so much _.”_ Celegorm doesn’t respond, his whole being a rictus of guilt and longing. But when he pulls back to wipe the tears away from Dior’s eyes with his thumbs, Dior sees he’s wearing his wedding ring.

Celegorm leans down to kiss him again, body protectively curving around Dior’s. A small bird tucked safe and warm against the breast of a wolf as Dior sinks into his arms. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Holidays to aaaaallll. It's Christmas Eve where I am, so have an early Christmas present. :D Thank you for all the kudos and comments, and I'm so happy this fic was so well-received. :D

**Author's Note:**

> The Author lives in a tropical country where 17 degrees Celsius is already cold enough to freeze her marrow bones. The Author is also a city girl who has never gone hiking in the woods. Any personal input/anyone pointing out some glaringly stupid mistakes is much appreciated. 
> 
> Special thanks and squishies to Taga_Bakod. This fic was your entire fault, asshole.


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